A longtime rural resident, I use my 60 plus years of life learning to opinionate here and elsewhere on the “interweb” on everything from politics to environmental issues. A believer in reasonable discourse rather than unhelpful attacks I try to give positive input to the blogesphere, so feel free to comment upon rural issues or anything else posted here. But don’t be surprised if you comments get zapped if you are not polite in your replys.

Monday, June 26, 2017

At The Bird Feeder .....

Its been a while since I have posted anything, having a stroke tends to slow one down and change your priorities I find, Still I was 'lucky' and have very few lasting effects and am now able to function fairly normaly again.
What encouraged me to write a bit today was our first sighting of both our male AND female Red Bellied Woodpeckers at our window feeder. The Male has been around for around 5 years and whilst very shy at first and barely providing us with an occasional glimpse gradually became used to us and eventually became a daily visitor, we had not however seen a female until a glimpse of her last year. We think perhaps that they raised a young one but cannot be sure, perhaps this year we will have better luck in that regard as the female is now recently visiting the feeder regularly also. (We presume having just finished sitting and now feeding young?)
Being on what was the northern edge of their range we are very pleased to confirm we have a pair here and hope before I finish this post to provide photo (and possibly video) proof of their presence from our webcam that sits just a few inches away from the feeder inside our window. Meanwhile our usual collection of other woodpeckers (Hairy, Downy) continue to keep us busy refilling the feeder helped in particular by the flush of newly hatched Grosbeaks and our usual collection of red & white Nuthatches (hard to tell the young from the regulars with that lot!)
In other places we have a pair of Phoebes nesting in the peak of our roof above the back door and Robin raising the third, or is that the fourth, clutch of youngsters in our pear tree just outside our back door, the House Wren busy telling us that she has young ones over by our wildflower garden and our Oriole letting us know she is still around once in a while!

Female too shy to get pic but here is the male who practically lives in the feeder!