It is four and a half inches long, smaller by an inch or less than the white-breasted. Often mingling almost invisibly amid flocks of chickadees and titmice, the red-breasted occasionally gives itself away by walking on the underside of a branch or heading down the trunk of a tree headfirst. As it does so, it gets a good view of the crevices and nooks in the bark. The red-breasted nuthatch inhabits mixed wood and coniferous forests, preferring spruce fir forests. It is a beneficial bird in this way, cleaning pests from trees, though its primary food source is the seed of conifers.
Nuthatches roost in cavities in trees.
They prefer to roost in groups, facing the bottom of the cavity. For nesting they use similar cavities, depositing from four to eleven eggs. Some attrition of nuthatch young is caused by the difficulty in fledging such a cavity. There is a bit of mystery surrounding the red-breasted nuthatch. Birds identical to our red-breasted can be found in widely varying locations.