There are TWO red-bellied woodpeckers on my tree right now. That's a first. I knew there were two of them, because one's male and one's female, but I'e never seen them both at the same time, and right now, they're only about 2' away from each other on the tree!  

Five ( Read more... )

alunatic once told me you could tell a Bald Eagle, because when you saw it, you'd go, "OMG that thing is HUGE." This bird was bigger. Much, much, bigger. It was dark, with an S-shaped neck and very long legs. It was flying over my backyard when I went out to let the dog in just now.

So far, I've seen four different woodpeckers in my yard. Downy, Hairy, and Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, plus Northern Flickers. The past few days, I've been hearing a new bird, and I think it's a Piliated Woodpecker! They have a pretty distinctive sound. I'm pretty sure that's what I'm hearing.

There's bright green foam forming on top of my pond. Is there anything easy I can do to fix it? Right now, the pond contains 10 goldfish, and one each of the following plants: Water Iris, Waterlily, Variegated Cattail, and Hornwort.

Where do you get your birdseed? I get a finch mix from Wild Birds Unlimited that everything loves (gold finches, ( Read more... )

After I posted yesterday, there was a cute little Chipping Sparrow under the finch feeders scrounging. Another first.

This morning, one of the Northern Flickers was back. This time, it was in the front yard. He was checking out a cavity in the Ash Tree outside the office window. It would be neat if they decided to nest in it this year.

What's black and white and red all over?

Answer: My back deck. Right now, there are two Black-capped Chickadees (black & white), two White-Breasted Nuthatches (black & white), one Dark-eyed Junco (black & white), and one male Downy Woodpecker (black & white with red spot on the back of his head) on and around the bird feeders out there.

What's the over under on how long it takes all you who were all "we want pictures" to say, "We were wrong?" ;-)

First, I'm proud to announce that it only took me 18 hours to remember that I needed to manually turn off the flash if I was going to be taking pictures through the glass of our back door. Not only do the pictures turn out better, but I'm ( Read more... )

N- and I went for a walk this afternoon after the rain stopped. While we were out, we saw several Robins (haven't seen any in our yard yet this year) and a Bald Eagle (second time this week!). Just now, I was in the backyard watching a herd of deer in the neighbor's yard and I noticed a small sparrow scratching for seeds on top of our root cellar. ( Read more... )

Snow plow: *plows street ( Read more... )