Friday was a lovely (if a bit chilly) late fall day, and I decided it was high time for a woods walk. (How has it been over a month since my last walk in the woods? Not cool! I was feeling some serious woods withdrawal.)
I ventured out to the Bent of the River Audubon sanctuary, where I had a couple of absolutely lovely visits this past summer. The fields are now brown, and the trees are mostly bare, but this place remains wonderful and welcoming.
There were creatures all over the place, but I'll just skip right to my favorite. Pileated Woodpecker!
:) I think Pileated Woodpeckers are one of the best things around, and I so often see them only as flashes of big black and white wings or hear them hammering in the distance. This lady and I kept crossing paths during my walk, and I'm very glad she decided to stay and work on this tree fairly close to me on our last meeting! This is the first time I've been able to watch one of these awesome creatures for any length of time and at anything resembling closeness. I love her black and white stripes, of course, and that brilliant red crest, but now I have other things to admire, too, like the scale-like pattern on her belly, and the small yellow spot at the base of her beak.
I couldn't very well just walk away with such a (relatively) cooperative Pileated Woodpecker right there, so here are a couple of videos of the lady at work. She has quite the powerful stroke with that beak!
While I was watching this woodpecker, a big Gray Squirrel came ambling down a tree a few feet away from me and looked at me curiously:
On another part of my walk, I came across this rather zealous Eastern Chipmunk:
Birds were foraging all over, too, including a couple of funny little Brown Creepers:
And the fields were filled with sparrows. Hello, handsome Song Sparrow:
There's a lot of gray and brown out there right now, and many cool things to see. I'm definitely adding Bent of the River to my more-frequently-visit list!
This gorgeous young male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker came through our yard this past Wednesday:
This guy hasn't got the brilliant clean red throat and cap that adult males have, and I think he's missing a black mark on his chest as well, but young or not, this is one handsome bird! I love those scalloped feathers on his chest, and yeah, his belly is kind of yellow... I guess.
Like so many other birds right now, this fellow was here for the Red Cedar's fruit!
Well, add another bird to the list. A Northern Flicker came by to eat these berry-like cones last year, so this Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is the second woodpecker I've seen eating from this Red Cedar. Still, it seems a strange thing for a woodpecker to do! Ah well! Who's going to tell this guy that he should be hammering tree trunks instead of munching berries?
That's right. Eat away!
I had way too much fun admiring this bird. I love the pattern on his back and wings:
And he looked cool in a more typically woodpecker-ish pose as well: (Look, a tiny woodpecker tongue!)
Those grappling-hook feet sure do their job well:
There were two other woodpecker species in these trees at the same time as this Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, but neither of them seemed interested in the cones. A Red-bellied Woodpecker hopped around outside of my camera's reach, and a female Downy Woodpecker (positively petite compared to the other woodpeckers) rested behind a branch:
She came out to forage as well, but she was after tidbits (insects? seeds other birds have secreted away?) hidden in the Red Cedar's bark:
And while not a woodpecker (but similar at least in those large clinging feet), this drowsy White-breasted Nuthatch was also hanging around, all puffed up against the cold:
I'm veering slightly off-theme again now, because I have one other yard bird to share. Yesterday, a curious little Carolina Wren apparently decided to see what all the titmouses were doing at our window feeder, and it ended up exploring the sill:
I have read that Carolina Wrens do sometimes eat sunflower seeds, but this bird either wasn't interested or couldn't quite figure out the source. It wasn't for lack of exploring, though!
You're quite the acrobat, little bird. Also, adorable:
I didn't see any Carolina Wrens in our yard all summer, but a couple of these guys have been hanging out here recently, singing their super loud songs and just basically being awesome. I certainly enjoy having them around, along with the woodpeckers and all the other cool avian visitors that stop by in the fall. :)
A few weeks ago, I noticed some strange structures on one of the plants on my porch. Now that leaves are browning and falling off, these weird shapes have become more noticeable:
I'm fairly certain these are katydid eggs! More specifically, I think they might be the eggs of a Greater Angle-wing Katydid, which I see frequently (and hear even more frequently) around here in the summer. How interesting that some female decided to pick this spot to deposit her crazy-looking eggs:
I'm really curious to see the baby katydids that will emerge from these shapes in the spring! (Fortunately for the katydids, this is a deciduous plant that I leave outside all winter, so they'll still get all the same natural temperature and climate exposure as if they were on a native plant actually growing in the ground.) In the meantime, I'll just admire these cool structures.
Also, this is totally unrelated to the katydids, but I can't help sharing another picture. Along with lots of Yellow-rumped Warblers, we've been getting a bunch of kinglets in our yard recently. A Ruby-crowned Kinglet who visited us on Sunday kept hovering just below our gutters before slipping up to get a drink. I couldn't resist taking a quick picture of this bird who was staying so relatively still in midair (if only for a second at a time), when kinglets are so fidgety even perched on a branch:
This kinglet must've been pretty darn still for my camera to get that much sharpness on its head and body. Nice hovering skills, little bird!
Something strange happened this past Saturday (October 12). It was late afternoon, and I was starting to think about cooking food, when I heard a big ruckus outside. I looked out the window and there were crows all over. As far as I could tell, there were about 100 birds out there, crowded into several nearby trees, and chowing down on our Red Cedar cones. (Everybody likes these things!) I have to say, it was a little disconcerting to look outside and see rows of crows looming over me:
Even weirder than the number of crows, though, was the species. These were Fish Crows -- I could only tell this because of their constant nasal cawing -- which I'm used to encountering whenever I'm at the shore, but which I almost never see in our yard. Around here, black corvids are pretty much always American Crows. So we got invaded by a passing mob (or "murder," I guess) of Fish Crows! Crazy and cool!
These birds were already impressive when they were just sitting around and eating, but their numbers were especially intimidating when they took to the air:
And the sound of all these birds was pretty intense, too. I took a quick video to try to capture the sound (most of the birds had flown out of easy view by the time I got ready to record), and it more or less worked:
Exciting stuff!
--------------------------------------
An update!
On Tuesday (October 16), the crows came back! This time, the lighting was better, so here are two more videos of Fish Crows taking over our yard:
We still have flocks of Cedar Waxwings munching on the berry-like Red Cedar cones outside our windows, and now the Yellow-rumped Warblers are visiting more frequently as well. I absolutely love these little birds, and I'm glad they seem to like the food in our trees so much!
This subtly-colored individual stopped by on Wednesday. I keep thinking of this bird as female, but it could very well be an immature male (as far as I can tell). Either way, this is one pretty bird:
Yellow-rumped Warblers have yellow on their butts, of course, but they also have those yellow patches on their sides, and yellow on top of their heads as well. This bird had such soft side patches, and an even subtler wash of yellow on its head:
I watched this bird pluck individual cones and then toss them up into the air and catch them again before swallowing. I'm not sure why it was doing this, but it was a bit like watching a juggling act. Very impressive stuff! (And much too quick for my camera.)
Speaking of motions too quick for my camera (in this day's low light), I actually quite like this picture of the bird taking off, streaky yellow patches and all:
There was another Yellow-butt foraging in these trees at the same time, and this bird was distinctly darker, with sharper yellow in all four spots:
I'm assuming this is an adult male in his non-breeding plumage (they're much darker in the spring), but I could be wrong!
I absolutely love the blue-gray patches on this guy's wings. The combination of gray and russet and black here actually reminds me -- strangely enough -- of the colors on an American Kestrel. But I'm sure that's not what this little creature is going for:
During all this time that these two Yellow-rumped Warblers were posing for me, I actually saw very little of the spot that gives them their name. Ah, there it is!
Fall is such a fantastic time, with new yard visitors practically every day. A couple days before these Yellow-rumped warblers showed up, we got a surprise fly-through from a Scarlet Tanager (any scarlet that this bird might have is hidden away for the season):
And a fancy Blue-headed Vireo stopped by as well, showing off its cool white spectacles:
These last two birds weren't eating any cones -- nor any sunflower seeds from the feeder we have set up nearby -- so they didn't stay around very long. Even these brief visits, though, are an awesome addition to this season's variety of wildlife. Hooray for diversity!
