This morning I watched a Hairy Woodpecker feeding a recently fledged baby Woodpecker. She would go to the peanut feeder and retrieve a peanut, crush it up a little, and then she would climb up the tree to a young chick that was hiding in the upper branches.
I had been watching the Woodpeckers going to the suet feeder and gathering food and carrying it away so I knew there was a nest close by, but I couldn’t find it. I figured when the babies fledged they’d bring their new young ones to the backyard feeders and today was the day they showed up.
Hairy Woodpecker feeding juvenile
Last summer I took this photo on the 26th of June, this year the Hairy’s maybe were able to nest a few weeks earlier than normal.
Blackburnian Warbler
Another bird that is nesting nearby in the Spruce trees that border the yard is the Blackburnian Warbler. This spectacular little Warbler has a high warbly call that I could hear being repeated incessantly. His song wafted through the open windows the other day and my curiosity got the best of me so I went out to try and find him. The Spruce trees where he has been calling from are densely situated so it’s hard to see what could be hiding in there. I snuck around beneath the trees with my binoculars trying to see the bird (and to make sure that was the bird that was calling). I could locate the particular tree that he was in, but trying to spot the brightly colored bird was another story, he was doing a really good job at hiding. I didn’t want to disturb him,so I didn’t phish or anything to try and draw him out. At one point I saw something tiny fly by and I thought to myself, was that a big bug or was it a bird?, then I could hear him calling from another treetop. Once again he eluded me and my binoculars. Then I thought I need to get around to the other side of the trees where the sun was shining. And finally there he was – singing his little “ssee-ssee-ssee” song just as proud as could be.
Now, yesterday, when I got home I didn’t hear his little call and I thought maybe he had moved on to another Spruce stand where there might be more birds. I got a little bummed out thinking maybe my trees weren’t good enough. But alas, this morning – there he was singing his heart out again – in the rain, I might add. Make my Day!!!
