Late last month, before the first frost and a half-hearted snowfall, I heard a familiar voice from high atop the tallest tree in the yard. It was a simple nasal sound, reminiscent of a white-breasted nuthatch, but higher pitched. It was a red-breasted nuthatch.

Several field guides aptly describe its voice as sounding like a toy tin horn. Listen to several red-breasted nuthatch vocalizations at www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/audio.

Even when I don't hear a red-breasted nuthatch for years, I recognize it immediately when I hear it. And often it is years between red-breast visits.

Though red-breasted nuthatches are typically found across the northern boreal forest and at higher elevations in the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains, recent reports on several Internet birding bulletin boards have raised my expectations. So I'm not the only one seeing red-breasted nuthatches this fall.

Though there are nesting records for red-breasted nuthatches from as far south as the mountains of Tennessee, it's basically a bird of the north woods that occasionally wanders south in search of food. These unpredictable migrations, called irruptions, are triggered by a poor seed crop in the northern coniferous forests. Perhaps some portions of Canada's boreal forest have failed to produce a bumper cone crop this year. That may explain why red-breasted nuthatches are showing up.

Like the more familiar white-breasted nuthatch, red-breasts are acrobatic birds that often climb head-first down tree trunks. This behavior alone makes nuthatches easy to recognize. Red-breasts are a bit smaller than white-breasts and distinguished by their rusty underparts, white eyebrows and black eye lines. Look for them in mixed flocks of chickadees, titmice and kinglets.

Red-breasted nuthatches are fearless, friendly and possible to hand feed. Before filling the feeders each morning, take a few minutes and stand near an empty feeder with an outstretched handful of sunflower kernels. In a week or so, you may be rewarded with a hungry beggar landing on your fingertips for a handout. The bird will look you right in the eye before dashing off with a tasty morsel of food.