Sitting on a bench surrounded by 70-foot-tall Norway spruces, I watch a red-breasted nuthatch take a peanut from a feeder in my front yard. There’s a cool breeze on this sunny autumn day, and I know winter is coming. But the nuthatch gives me comfort.

Found year-round much farther north, this individual may have decided to spend the winter with us. He’s been sampling peanuts, suet and water and alighting on spruces, redbuds and the silver maple. It’s called an irruptive species because it leaves its north woods home in late summer to fly south if the foods it eats, seeds from coniferous trees, are scarce.

It typically is seen about every other year in winter where we live, depending on the cone crop production up north.

It seems tamer than other bird species, though, of course I know he

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