Sitta canadensis
Order Passeriformes
Family Sittidae
Subfamily Sittinae
Other names: Red-bellied Nuthatch
♂ Adult male.– Upper parts bluish-gray, top of head and stripe through eye black; line over eye white; under parts reddish-brown.
♀ Adult female.— Top of head and stripe through eye bluish-gray; under parts paler.
Nest, in a hole in a tree.
Eggs, white, speckled with reddish-brown.
In northern New England and New York, in tracts of spruce, the Red-bellied Nuthatch is generally an abundant permanent resident. The forests are sometimes filled with its little nasal call. At very irregular intervals, it southward in large numbers, and becomes a common fall migrant, in September and October, throughout southern New England and the Hudson Valley. After such a migration many individuals stay through the winter, and some linger till May. As an ordinary thing, however, these birds find food enough in the north, and are either entirely absent in southern New England in winter, or occur only as straggling migrants, or as rare winter visitants. When they come south, they resort either to the pines or to the Norway spruces, clinging to the cones till they extract the seeds, then flying with nervous little movements to a limb where they either hammer open the seed, or as frequently hammer it into a crevice for safe-keeping. The Red-bellied Nuthatch is a very active, restless bird, and its short tail gives it a comical air of fussiness. The ordinary call-note is a high-pitched nasal ank, ank; when the bird is excited this note is repeated very rapidly and for a long period. It has, besides, a call-note like the syllable hüt, which is often varied in pitch. Its nasal call is one or two tones higher than that of the [White-breasted Nuthatch].
If a Nuthatch has bright reddish-brown under parts, there can be no doubt as to its identity, but in spring and summer the color fades, and the female in particular is almost grayish below. It must then be distinguished from the White-bellied Nuthatch by its small size, and by the black or bluish-gray line through the eye.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)