Monday, February 16, 2009

Birdfeeder Buddies: Newbies

Although it's still deep in winter, and we still have a good bit of cold and potentially heavy snow to go, you can't help but see Nature starting the slow gearing up towards a new Spring here in the Carolinas. Trees are fattening their buds, some areas with ferns are magically a bit 'greener', and even the raspberry patch is starting to show the greenish low stems and reddish tips.

A very infrequent visitor finally made lots of appearances to the feeder this weekend: The Red-bellied Woodpecker. I will say it is a much more skittish bird than any of the others so far, but maybe it's just not use to the house and some big guy sitting inside with this huge gun-like camera pointing at it!

FYI, there is an itty bitty red patch down low on its belly (hence its name), but it is hard to see in the field given it's 'low-cation'. Too, the male's red head goes from the nape all the way over the crown, where the female's red covers just the nape.


(click on pics to enlarge)


Red-bellied Woodpecker (female)

A pair of Cardinals also came around for a while...always nice to have that splash of vibrant color in a dun winter landscape...

Cardinal (male)

Cardinal (female)

"MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE!"

is what I thought of when I saw this Carolina Wren vocalizing on top of the suet feeder...


Carolina Wren

I've shown the Downy Woodpecker on several other posts, but thought this was a really good picture showing how the woodpeckers use their rather stiff tails to help balance them on tree trunks (or suet feeders!) while they 'drill'...

Downy Woodpecker (male)

And while this next shot is not the sharpest, it was a shot I specifically wanted to have...for a special reason...and the subject of the next blog post...(cryptic enough for you???)...

Downy Woodpecker (male)

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