Bird Watching: Pileated Woodpecker

Many sitings of the Pileated Woodpecker, Phlaeotomus pileatus, in the nearly naked woods along Sligo Creek.

In The Park With Romeo

On our Sunday morning walk, Romeo and I saw a beautiful Pileated Woodpecker.  We often hear them with their amazingly loud echoing bock, bock, bock sounds as then either explore trees for hidden insect delicacies or carve out their "homes".  They are beautiful birds for sure!

Bird Watching Gift

A lovely little visitor to my gardens this morning. And such a patient little subject for an old man with hand-held camera and no tripod using a zoom lens! She posed there for over two minutes!

Another Bird

The first bird, in fact, in my 1930 published Birds Field Guide is for the Carolina Paroquet.  A bird that's been extinct for nearly as long...

Purple Finch

Came home from work last Thursday to discover a purple finch at my fountain in the front yard. Not a common sight around here.

What I'm Reading #36

It's not really "reading" so much as it is listening! I got this book at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh during my recent visit. It has wonderful information about 75 of the most common North American birds. All but sixteen are Passerine (songbirds). AND there is a built in speaker system with songs of each, sometimes more than one type per species for a total of 132 distinctive vocalizations.

And here's the BEST part. I play the song of the Grey Catbird, Dumetella carolinensis, on my backyard deck and she comes and sings back! The more I play it, the closer she gets to me in an effort to discover how the hell I can sing to her!

We've long been friends in my garden, and when she otherwise has shown up and shown interest in me, I've attempted to respond to her with my own whistles that mimic her song, but she must be thinking, "Damn, he's gotten good!"

Northern Flicker

I saw a Northern Flicker today. Awesome!

Spring: Birds!

Spring is officially here and so are the birds. I awoke this morning to the sight of a a blue jay, cyanocitta cristata, and a male northern cardinal, cardinalis cardinalis, sharing the branches of my still naked yoshino cherry. The jay would flit to the ground in search of insects and then back up into the tree.

When the cardinal grew tired of it,--and not seeing what it was he was looking for from that vantage--he flew into the higher branches of a nearby maple affording me an even better look at his magnificent scarlet plumage. For the past 16 years (as long as I lived here) a pair of cardinals has kept residence in the neighborhood. They nest in the thick prickly foliage of one of the towering american holly bushes/trees, with it's hypodermically spiked leaves and tightly twisted and stubby branches, it's an ingeniously safe place to raise a family.
And while very welcome visitors to my yard, neither of these birds is unusual.

So imagine my delight when I next saw a perfect specimen of a male rufous-sided towhee, pipilo erythrophthalmus. His coal black cap and red eyes and the bookends of raw umber feathers framing his bright white breast. It's the first time I've seen one of these in my yard.

Yellow-Throated Warbler Spotted!

I awoke this morning to discover a pair of Yellow-Throated Warblers feasting on the seeds in the sugar maple in my backyard. My first thought was that they were just golden finches which are rather common, but they just lacked a certain hyper-tensivity that the finches embody in rydelin-deficited spades. I observed them for a good 15 minutes before I hit pay dirt. One emerged from the confusion of the foliage to fly to a higher branch, and I clearly saw the beautiful bluish-grey cap and back contrasted against the brilliant yellow throat. What joy!