In keeping with the column’s theme of the last few weeks – familiar feeder birds – I’d like to introduce our next character: the red-breasted nuthatch, common throughout the northern forests of United States and much of Canada.

I first became acquainted with this sprite soon after I had moved to Maine and was living in Blue Hill. I remember the first time I had to refill the suet feeder; I hadn’t yet moved away – in fact, I hadn’t even taken my hands off the feeder – before this cheeky little bird had alighted and begun to swallow small chunks of suet. It was only a few inches from my face and I had ample opportunity to study it. Actually, I felt I was the one under scrutiny as those tiny, sparkling black eyes stared boldly back at me. The bird had spunk out of all proportion to its size!

As small as this bird is – measuring 41/2 inches – it is not North America’s smallest nuthatch. That prize goes to the aptly named pygmy nuthatch, a resident of the western U.S. and South America, checks in at 41/4 inches. Then there is the brown-headed nuthatch, a southeastern bird, and our other most common nuthatch, the white-breasted nuthatch – a giant at 53/4 inches.

As a group, nuthatches are pretty homogenous. There aren’t extensive differences in plumage patterns, coloration, or foraging behavior among them. However, a few things set the red-breasted nuthatch apart.

Unlike other nuthatches, red-breasted nuthatches prefer predominately spruce and fir forests, the cone-crops of which greatly influence their seasonal movements. The red-breasted is the only nuthatch that migrates. Northern populations may regularly vacate the extreme portions of their breeding ranges come winter. In addition, any remaining populations are known to “irrupt” from their normal ranges whenever there is a shortage of food – a failure of the cone-crop. Sometimes large numbers of these birds move south; in big “invasion” years, these nuthatches may travel as far as the Gulf Coast.

And that’s not all. In fact, “with its propensity for long-distance movements,” state Cameron K. Ghalambor and Thomas E. Martin in the “The Birds of North America” species account, “the red-breasted nuthatch is the only North American nuthatch to have crossed the Atlantic to Europe as a vagrant.”

An amazing journey for such a bird.

Fortunately, most don’t need to go quite that far; and, thanks to their utilization of bird feeders, we can enjoy them in our own yards. Which brings me to how we can distinguish the male from the female.

In a recent column about black-capped chickadees, you may recall that there are no obvious differences between the sexes of this bird – at least, not to our eyes, which are unable to see the ultraviolet colors that birds can. But, when researchers used a device that enabled them to see this spectrum, it became evident that male chickadees had brighter, more contrasting shades in their plumage than did females.

Red-breasted nuthatches have more apparent differences that can be seen with the naked eye. In this case the male’s plumage is also brighter, with more contrasts: the eye-stripe and crown patch are coal black, whereas the female’s is gray; the white “eyebrow” or supercilium, and the white underneath the dark eye stripe, are brighter in the male; and the male has a more vibrant, ruddy-orange color on his breast, belly and undertail feathers. The overall effect is more eye-catching – both for us, and, presumably, the female.

Pretty flashy for a little boreal woodland sprite.

Chris Corio, a volunteer at Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden, can be reached at fieldspond@juno.com