Two nuthatches flew to the feeder outside the dining room window as I sat eating breakfast, and watching the birds outside, of course. Nuthatch, I read in a book titled âWords for Birds,â is a corruption of the word nuthack. And nuthatches do just that, hack at nuts. But they do it in a different position than any other birds. They stick a nut or a large seed, in the bark of a tree, then, as they cling to the bark above the nut they hack at, break it open and eat. Nuthatches are upside-down birds. They perch and feed with head down. One of the nuthatches that flew to my feeder as I watched landed, upside down, on a corner of a feeder, the other, also upside down, landed on another side of the feeder.