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Woodpeckers & Nuthatches

Woodpeckers & Nuthatches

Great spotted woodpeckers and nuthatches are the two birds that turn a garden feeding station into something worth watching from the kitchen window, and both come for the same thing: peanuts and suet. They are tree birds that feed by clinging to bark, so a feeder they can grip — a sturdy mesh peanut feeder, a suet block cage, a suet-filled coconut half hung from a branch — suits them far better than a perch.

Peanuts should always be in a mesh feeder rather than loose, both because a whole peanut is a choking hazard for chicks in spring and because the mesh is what lets a woodpecker work at it the way it would work at bark. Position matters more than for most garden birds: a feeder within a few metres of a mature tree or a tall hedge is far more likely to be used than one in the middle of an open lawn, because neither species likes to cross open ground.

A woodpecker visit is usually brief and unmistakable — everything else leaves the feeder at once. Nuthatches are quicker still, taking a nut and carrying it off to wedge in bark rather than eating in place.

Related ranges

The same feeders serve blue tits and great tits. Browse peanuts, suet blocks and coconut halves.

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