The Red-breasted Nuthatch is the smaller, more northern cousin of the familiar White-breasted Nuthatch, with a rusty-washed breast, a bold black eye-line, and a white eyebrow that gives it a striped face. Its call is unmistakable — a nasal, tin-horn "yank-yank" that sounds like a tiny toy trumpet echoing through the pines. Like all nuthatches it climbs headfirst down tree trunks, prying seeds and insects from bark crevices.
In Michigan's northern conifer forests it is a year-round resident, but in the southern Lower Peninsula its numbers swing wildly from year to year. When the northern spruce and fir cone crop fails, Red-breasted Nuthatches "irrupt" south in large numbers, showing up at feeders far outside their usual range. It smears sticky conifer resin around its nest hole, a curious habit thought to deter predators and insects.
Eats insects, spiders, and their eggs teased from bark in the warm months, shifting to conifer seeds in winter. At feeders it favors sunflower seeds, peanuts, and suet, often wedging a seed into bark to hammer it open, and will cache food for later.
That nasal, repeated "yank-yank" is the Red-breasted Nuthatch. It is higher and more toy-like than the White-breasted Nuthatch's call and carries well through conifer stands.
Red-breasted Nuthatches are irruptive. When the northern conifer seed crop fails, large numbers move south in fall and winter, appearing at feeders well beyond their usual range before retreating north again.
The Red-breasted is smaller, has a rusty (not white) breast, and shows a black line through the eye with a white eyebrow. The White-breasted has a plain white face and clean white underparts.
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