Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Birds And The Bee

About a month ago, DH and I bought a suet birdfeeder especially for the woodpeckers that we have around our house. I've been so entertained by their calls and antics that I wanted to attract them to a certain spot in order to photograph them :o)

We placed the feeder on the dead tree at the back of the property just for now. It proved to be an ideal site, until the other morning when I found it on the ground :o( I'm thinking raccoons.

The salesman at the bird store suggested this type of suet feeder because there are only certain birds that can feed upside down. I never knew this! It didn't take long before my little guys started arriving :o)

At first I thought we were only getting the Downy Woodpeckers -

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But after much observation, we realized that we were getting the Hairy Woodpeckers as well -

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They look the same don't they? Apparently they are hard to tell apart but the Hairy is somewhat bigger than the Downy.

What we NEVER expected was this visitor -

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That's a Pileated Woodpecker, the biggest of their species! It's an absolutely beautiful and incredible bird. Excuse the poor quality but when you only have seconds to take a shot, sometimes you don't always get the best pictures.

Since this was his second visit and the birdfeeder was down, we're going to have to quickly come up with another spot and some more peanut butter suet :o)

On Friday I was pleasantly surprised to see this in my mailbox -

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I won the pattern off of Erynne's new site! If you haven't seen her new designs, head on over to the Red House. Thanks so much Erynne! I'm really going to enjoy stitching this one :o)


16 comments:

marylin & poussy said...

Magnificent these images thanks to you!
Best regards of France mary

valerie said...

Great photos! The pileated woodpecker is beautiful! I hope you get more pics of them soon. Happy weekend!

Hillery said...

Congrats on the win. What a unique pattern. Love the woodpeckers. We get them around alot too.
Hope your having a great day.

Irene said...

WOW Nice woodpeckers ! Nice design too, look forward to seeing it stitched.

LisaG said...

They're excellent pictures, DH has been trying to get a good pic of a woodpecker in our garden for ages but it's just not happening.

Chocolates4Breakfast (Terri ~ Boog) said...

I love woodpeckers, too! Love the pics! Congrats on the Red House win!

Annie said...

Cool photos .. new birds for your life list?

And congrats on winning Eyrnne's chart!

Carol said...

I just love bird photos, Cathey, and those woodpecker pictures are great--I've never seen anything like that Pileated one--incredible with his red "hat!" I've been taking some photos of some baby robins lately which are actually not the most attractive birds when they are little!

Congratulations on the pretty bee chart win. That set up a perfect title for this post, didn't it :)

WendyCarole said...

nice woodpeckers
love the chart

Patty C. said...

Woodpeckers are fun to watch
Great photos
Glad to hear you won a chart - it's so fun - just like Christmas :)

Anonymous said...

Great bird shots! I love to see the birds people get in their gardens :o)

Stitchabilities said...

Lovely pics Cathey, I saw a woodpecker at our birdfeeder but couldn't get a picture it kept hiding!

Melanie said...

Great pics! I love the woodpeckers that come to our feeders. (We even get the occasional one on our finch seed feeders which is quite funny to see.)

re: Suet feeder. Could have been the squirrels too. In my experience, they will move heaven and earth to get to suet. I've even had one grab my suet feeder off my 2nd floor deck and drag it plum across my entire yard. o_0

Anonymous said...

You're so welcome Cathey!!
Love your birdie photos! I've never had much luck in getting good shots of things that move,lol!

Erynne

Jennifer said...

Lucky lucky you with the pileated woodpecker - they're notoriously shy. We heard them all the time in the woods behind our house in DE, but never saw them up close. We got quite a few downy and hairy woodpeckers, and my favorite red bellied woodpecker. We had a family living near us - momma, daddy and baby woodpecker would come to feed at our feeder.

Speaking of suet feeders - there's a suet "dough" you can buy for the summer that won't melt if it gets hot. You can usually find it in the bird stores. Also, we ended up putting a tiny little luggage lock on our suet cage to keep it closed because the squirrels figured out how to pop it open and steal the suet.

Tammy said...

Cute boy and I bought a bird feeder too. I love it. The birds are starting to come more often. It brings a wonderful feeling to look out and see them around.