rik-rat corn pile

Friday, February 19, 2010

Redheaded woodpeckers, the jerk of the woodpecker family.

1. An impressive bird with his hackles up.
2. A dumpy bird looking dumpy.

Like I've said before, every Sunday is my bird watching day. I pour wild bird seed on the lawn and let my nerdish tendencies take over. I get out my field guides, my camera, sit by the window and try to get an inventory of all the species in my backyard. I've noticed that a certain breed of woodpecker is WAY more aggressive then any other bird out there...its even more aggressive then the blue jays. Here's the scoop:

Last Sunday, I had a bouquet of birds pecking about: blue jays, cardinals, house sparrows, titmice (?), juncos, chickadees. It was awesome. Awesome until two black and white birds came flying out of nowhere to dive bomb and peck-attack all the birds who were quietly enjoying their seeds. One of the aggressive birds had a BRIGHT red head, a black body top, and white underparts (his posturing was impressive). The other bird looked dumpy. I've recently found out the dumpy looking bird was a juvenile woodpecker, he'll become more red in time. But yeah, it was a strait up bird attack.
Once the two woodpeckers got their fill of ill-gotten seed they left and the other birds came back. However, this guerrilla style attack happened three more times in four hours. These lil' guys are guerrilla warriors but maybe I'm anthropomorphizing them...hell, I know I am.

6 comments:

  1. Aren't birds supposed to migrate for the Winter or something like that?

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  2. not all of them. they all have different breeding, summer, winter, migration patterns. crazy, eh?

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  3. when do the hummingbirds return to Utumwa?

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  4. they'll be here at the end of april or may depending on the weather. can't wait to get my hummingbird feeder set up. so many tiny birds buzzing.

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  5. titmice is correct, good job using your language instincts

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