Bird Visits

Some recent sightings.

Exhibit A, a pileated woodpecker cleaning one of our tall oaks.

Exibit B, this year we get regular visits from a pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds. They love the sugar water I put out (4 to 1 water/sugar) and visit every 15 minutes during the day. It's right outside our kitchen window. The dude hummingbird has the ruby throat, while the babe hummingbird does not.

Exhibit C, a pair of Eastern Phoebes have built a nest under our eaves over our front window. The cat leaps at the screen every time they return to the nest. It's full of chicks right now and you can hear them peeping. Click on the photo (taken only 3 minutes ago), and you should see the chicks laying-low, trying to be quiet and unobtrusive.

Exhibit D, as I was cleaning leaves this evening from a clogged gutter, I moved the ladder in front of the garage and - hey, how did we miss this - there was a Robin nest with a single blue egg in the light fixture between the garage doors. Cool, huh?

Bat House

Today I put up the Bat House I built last year. It's cedar and has 3 chambers. Multi-chambered houses are like apartment buildings, so there is potential to get more occupants. (They pay their rent in eating mosquitoes and producing guano.) According to various websites, the house should be mounted over 15 feet high on a wall or chimney which gets at least 8 hours of sunlight. Bats definitely don't want their homes to be in trees. I suppose they consider it inferior territory for the likes of birds and squirrels. This was the best I could do on our house which is in a heavily wooded area.

As of this writing, I have learned that mounting on aluminum siding - as was done here - was not a good idea and such a location will "rarely be used". I'm better off putting it on a pole. Now where do I find a 15 foot pole?

Winter Visitor

The morning after a winter snowfall, we had a visitor.

Clearly not playing possum.

Nature Sightings

We are blessed with our new home to have it located adjacent to 600 acres of protected woodlands.

As such we do get wildlife. This includes: mice, usually found dead - smushed or rotted; bear, visiting as they do, rather oblivious to this whole "people" thing; snakes, along the driveway; chipmunks everywhere; and birds, at the feeder, under the feeder, nearby looking hopefully at the feeder with squirrels not far behind. Of course many of the animals like the snakes, bears, and chipmunks have disappeared for the season.

We've been seeing deer tracks around the house, because the snow leaves a perfect surface to tell who's been coming by. Back in November our neighbor told us how some deer were in their front yard playing tag with their bird-eating cat. It was only recently that we have actually seen deer on the property. About three weeks ago, some house guests noticed deer right out our kitchen window. I guess we needed new eyes to scope them out. There were three of them. Only a few days later, I saw another one taking its time munching on bark in the woods. I snapped a quick photo where you can just make it out.



Then last week, Sasha noticed a woodpecker and alerted me while I was in the shower. I had seen a Downy Woodpecker at the feeder once, so I was not in much of a hurry to see this one myself. When I finally saw it a few minutes later, I was awestruck. This was a male Pileated Woodpecker which is about 19 inches tall. That's huge. That's about the height of a newborn baby - up to your knee. We're talking Woody Woodpecker with the red head. It wasn't at the feeder, it was making it's own feeder out of an oak in the yard. After a while, it threw up it's wings like a costumed caped super-hero and peeled off into the woods skipping from tree to tree.