Skip to main content

Hairy Woodpeckers Like Terrarium Wood!

Here are some pictures from the backyard on Sunday. We've been getting a lot more woodpeckers coming to the tube feeder. That's the one with black oil sunflower seed in it, and I'm honestly surprised at how much they like it. I usually think of woodpeckers as eating suet or hard-packed seed cakes.
The Hairy Woodpecker really likes the terrarium wood Steve put out there for the birds "on deck" to sit on. He originally bought it for our Gold Dust Day Gecko Pololu, but we only had her for about a month- she died last May :-( At least now our backyard "pets" get to enjoy it! I can't imagine that there's anything to eat in there- the wood has been in dry storage in our house- but if the woodpeckers want to peck at it for fun that's ok with me!


I like this picture that captures two of them:

Here's an American Goldfinch really stretching its neck to get in there:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Terrarium Wood...now that is a good use for it!
Cathleen Voss said…
@Andy- At least it's not going to waste! They're still loving it- especially the goldfinches.

Popular posts from this blog

Difference Between Grackles and Starlings

I saw a sad sight today during my lunchtime jog—a dead grackle. Or was it a starling? I'll get to that in a minute. I was making my way down to the trail along the Charles River when I saw what I thought was an injured bird in the middle of the road. It was just sitting there and I figured it was just stunned or maybe had an injured wing. The bird probably didn't have much of a chance, but the least I could move it out of the road. As I got closer to the bird I saw it had its mouth open and then I realized the gruesome truth—it was dead and was frozen in that position. I just got shivers thinking about it. The poor thing. Anyway, so it got me to thinking 'What is the difference between grackles and starlings?' I use the two interchangeably and haven't really made an effort to sort it out. Until now. I like to use All About Birds from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as an online resource. The site is comprehensive and easy to use. (I also really like the 'Cool ...

Using Birds to Control Tomato Hornworms

Here's a lovely macro shot of a tomato hornworm caterpillar taking a little break from gorging himself on my tomatoes. Ever seen one before? They're huge and pretty startling to come across when you're pruning your tomato plants. They blend right in, until you accidentally touch one- hopefully not with the horned end! This picture was taken near the end of the season so I wasn't SO upset, but I definitely want to prevent hornworms for next season. I started doing some research on how to get rid of tomato hornworms and the good news is you don't need to use insecticides or crazy home remedies- birds will do the work for you! This great website I found- the Yardener has a whole section about insect pests in the vegetable garden. According to the site, feeding birds year-round will help you control the tomato hornworm problem in your garden. For bird lovers, this shouldn't be a chore at all. Just keep your feeders full with desirable seed like black-oil sunflower s...

Large-billed Crow pictures from Japan

These large-billed crow pictures come courtesy of my work colleague Phil who lives in Japan. He told me he had some great Japanese crow pictures, and the first thing I noticed about the bird was the large bill. I started doing some research to come up with the correct crow name. First I thought it was a carrion crow since those are a common type of Japanese crow, but the bill wasn't big enough. Then I found pictures of the large-billed crow and those were a match! Duh- "large bill"- it couldn't have been any simpler. These crows are also called jungle crows, but most of the birding sites call them large-billed crows. Phil said they can get really big, which I believe since American crows are huge sometimes. I have vivid memories of standing my in my parents Cape Cod kitchen doing dishes and getting spooked by something huge in my periphery on the deck. All it ever was was a giant crow, but really they can be scary when they get so big! Here are some interesting thing...