Bird Watching

This is an enjoyable event here for myself and the four legged felines. It's better than television any day. Of course, if you have seen daytime television these days you can totally relate.

We have one of the supposed squirrel proof feeders that is weight triggered so it closes when the squirrel pushes on the bar. However, the annoying squirrels have learned to climb on top and lean over without touching the feeding bar so it does not close. A few squawks from the blue jays and the blackbirds and the squirrels do leave. If the squawking does not get the squirrels attention, we have several aggressive blue jays that do not take no for answer much to my amusement.

Today, we had several very enjoyable sights at the start of our day. We, my husband and I were playing a game of cribbage on the deck with our morning coffee. To our right of the table is a pole with a bird feeder that extends over the lower yard. I know a typical backyard experience for some people but today was different. The birds are used to us being there on the deck while they indulge in their daily feedings.



On any given day we have a downy woodpecker and a red bellied woodpecker that come to the two suet feeders that hang above the bird feeder. What made today so special was a pileated woodpecker and a red-headed woodpecker also came. We had four different types of woodpeckers all at once on the two suet feeders. It was a sight to behold and the sounds that each made were so different than the other. Where was my camera when I needed it but inside the house, isn't that always the case.

I went and looked each of the birds up on this web site so I could correctly name them and share their pictures with you and the information about each that I cut and pasted with each bird. It is really cool to have birds come to the feeder but to have 4 unique woodpeckers at one time was incredible.

  http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/browse_tax/45/

This beautiful creature is a Downy woodpecker. This one visits us the most frequently at our backyard sanctuary.

Cool Facts

• In winter Downy Woodpeckers are frequent members of mixed species flocks. Advantages of flocking include having to spend less time watching out for predators and better luck finding food from having other birds around.
• Male and female Downy Woodpeckers divide up where they look for food in winter. Males feed more on small branches and weed stems, and females feed on larger branches and trunks. Males keep females from foraging in the more productive spots. When researchers have removed males from a woodlot, females have responded by feeding along smaller branches.
• The Downy Woodpecker eats foods that larger woodpeckers cannot reach, such as insects living on or in the stems of weeds. You may see them hammering at goldenrod galls to extract the fly larvae inside.
• Woodpeckers don’t sing songs, but they drum loudly against pieces of wood or metal to achieve the same effect. People sometimes think this drumming is part of the birds’ feeding habits, but it isn’t. In fact, feeding birds make surprisingly little noise even when they’re digging vigorously into wood.
• Downy Woodpeckers have been discovered nesting inside the walls of buildings.
• The oldest known Downy Woodpecker lived to be at least 11 years 11 months old.

 

This is the one I was so surprised to see, its a pileated woodpecker.

Cool Facts

• The Pileated Woodpecker digs characteristically rectangular holes in trees to find ants. These excavations can be so broad and deep that they can cause small trees to break in half.
• A Pileated Woodpecker pair stays together on its territory all year round. It will defend the territory in all seasons, but will tolerate new arrivals during the winter.
• The feeding excavations of a Pileated Woodpecker are so extensive that they often attract other birds. Other woodpeckers, as well as House Wrens, may come and feed there.
• The Pileated Woodpecker prefers large trees for nesting. In young forests, it will use any large trees remaining from before the forest was cut. Because these trees are larger than the rest of the forest, they present a lightning hazard to the nesting birds.
• The oldest known Pileated Woodpecker was 12 years 11 months old.

This is a red-bellied woodpecker.

Cool Facts

• You may sometimes see Red-bellied Woodpeckers wedge large nuts into bark crevices, then whack them into manageable pieces using their beaks. They also use cracks in trees and fence posts to store food for later in the year, a habit it shares with other woodpeckers in its genus.
• For birds that nest in cavities, nest holes are precious turf. Red-bellied Woodpeckers have been known to take over the nests of other birds, including the much smaller (and endangered) Red-cockaded Woodpecker. But more often they’re victims to the aggressive European Starling. As many as half of all Red-bellied Woodpecker nests in some areas get invaded by starlings.
• You may occasionally see a Red-bellied Woodpecker flying quickly and erratically through the forest, abruptly changing direction, alighting for an instant and immediately taking off again, keeping up a quick chatter of calls. Scientists categorize this odd behavior as a type of play that probably helps young birds practice the evasive action they may one day need.
• A Red-bellied Woodpecker can stick out its tongue nearly 2 inches past the end of its beak. The tip is barbed and the bird’s spit is sticky, making it easier to snatch prey from deep crevices. Males have longer, wider-tipped tongues than females, possibly allowing a breeding pair to forage in slightly different places on their territory and maximize their use of available food.
• The oldest known Red-bellied Woodpecker was 12 years 1 month old.

And this is the other one until today I had not seen, this is a red-headed woodpecker.

Cool Facts

• The Red-headed Woodpecker is one of only four North American woodpeckers known to store food, and it is the only one known to cover the stored food with wood or bark. It hides insects and seeds in cracks in wood, under bark, in fence posts, and under roof shingles. Grasshoppers are regularly stored alive, but wedged into crevices so tightly that they cannot escape.
• Red-headed Woodpeckers are fierce defenders of their territory. They may remove the eggs of other species from nests and nest boxes, destroy other birds’ nests, and even enter duck nest boxes and puncture the duck eggs.
• The Red-headed Woodpecker benefited from the chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease outbreaks of the twentieth century. Though these diseases devastated trees they provided many nest sites and foraging opportunities for the woodpeckers.
• The striking Red-headed Woodpecker has earned a place in human culture. Cherokee Indians used the species as a war symbol, and it makes an appearance in Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, telling how a grateful Hiawatha gave the bird its red head in thanks for its service.
• The Red-headed Woodpecker has many nicknames, including half-a-shirt, shirt-tail bird, jellycoat, flag bird, and the flying checker-board.
• Pleistocene-age fossils of Red-headed Woodpeckers—up to 2 million years old—have been unearthed in Florida, Virginia, and Illinois.
• The Red-headed Woodpecker was the “spark bird” (the bird that starts a person’s interest in birds) of legendary ornithologist Alexander Wilson in the 1700s.
• The oldest Red-headed Woodpecker on record was banded in 1926 in Michigan and lived to be at least 9 years, 11 months old.

Behind the magnolia bush is a pole that the bird feeder is suspended from over the deck area. This is how my felines typically spend their mornings and the birds pay absolutely no attention to their presence.

This is old man is our Maine coon cat Quasi. He will be nineteen years old in August this year. His favorite pastime is snoozing in the deck chair these days. He will watch the birds for a bit but then that leads to his morning snooze. Later, in the day he usually retires to our bedroom, lying on our queen size bed under the ceiling fan until dinner time. Yes, he is definitely spoiled.

And this girl is my partner in crime Purryl, she is what they called domestic short haired tabby. Purryl usually sits on the desk beside me when I work on the blog. Today, however, she has not left her comfy deck chair. Purryl spends the afternoon in the cat bed on top of the cat tower by the kitchen window. She likes to watch what is going on in between her snoozes.

 

Our youngest cat, Yeats does all of his snoozing in the sewing room. He will watch the birds on the deck briefly but then retires to his favorite bed. He does not snooze very often in the deck chairs like the other two. Yeats likes to sleep where it is very quiet. I can sew there but if I am talking on the phone he will give me one of those looks and stalk off.

 

Tomorrow morning I will bring my camera and what you bet they will not be there, that's my usual kind of luck. I can't linger too long out there tomorrow because we are going to spend the day at Seaside Heights. I am looking forward to seeing all the changes that have been made since Hurricane Sandy. It was one of the hardest hit areas during the storm. I was so sad for everyone that lived and worked there especially after seeing all the places we loved so badly damaged.