BirdingGirl

This past weekend Steve and I went to Orono, Maine to visit my cousin Heather. This was the first time I had been visit her since she moved up there about a year ago. We had perfect weather, and in between hiking and camping I managed to squeeze in just a little bit of birding! Here are some pics from our hike to the top of Cadillac Mountain. Isn't it beautiful? Here's Heather on the way up. Me & Heath at the top of the mountain. Justin, Heather's boyfriend, Heath, her dog Royce & Steve. My favorite siting from the weekend was a lifer(?) for me. The Pileated Woodpecker! The first one I saw during our hike at Cadillac Mountain. I saw something huge flying through the trees after we startled it, and caught just glimpses of its all-dark gray body, and red crown. When I told Heather what I saw she said not to worry- I'd be able to get a good picture of it when we got back to her apartment in Orono. She said as long as they put out suet, they'll have Pileated Woo...

I went birding in West Bridgewater State Forest last Sunday. Steve suggested it since he had noticed on a map of the Bridgewater area. We're always looking for new places to go hiking and birding, plus we're also slightly obsessed with Hockomock Swamp ... I was a little disappointed not to see anyone else out enjoying the beautiful weather this past weekend. There was plenty of evidence of people partying in the area, and ATV tracks, but that was it. Lucky for me I hit it up in off-peak hours! I got to enjoy the sounds of the woodpeckers, chickadees and robins. I also encountered some red squirrels, which scared the heck out me. I saw Downy Woodpeckers, Hairy Woodpeckers, and Red-bellied Woodpeckers (a lifer!). Red-bellied Woodpecker: The red squirrels I encountered while I was walking by a historic stone wall. Steve and I encounter these a lot while hiking in New England. I remember learning as a child about early settlers who cleared the land for farming and used the rocks to...

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:

This picture of a woodpecker from my trip to Colorado reminded me how difficult it can be to tell the difference between Downy Woodpeckers and Hairy Woodpeckers. I see far more downy woodpeckers here in Massachusetts, but when I'm at Steve's parents house in Connecticut I see more hairy woodpeckers. There's one that lives in his parents' yard and is always pecking away at the tree in the front yard. Colorado was completely new territory so I didn't know what to expect. I remember this bird being on the larger side when I took the picture, and you can notice its elongated neck and extensive black on its shoulder. I was curious if woodpeckers were any different out in Colorado. While I was doing research on All About Birds I found a link more information about birds of the Rockies: Based on this I am pretty confident it was a hairy woodpecker, not only because of the size, but because of the extensive black on its shoulder/back. This picture came from Cornell Lab of...

I know it's been ages since I posted, but that doesn't mean I haven't been out birdwatching. I still have some pictures to post from a trip to the Chestnut Hill Reservoir in December, and I'm finally putting up the pictures from our trip to Colorado the first week in January. I was anxious to see some new species, but in fact, some of my best sightings were birds that I could also see in right here in Massachusetts. I was particularly excited about this Belted Kingfisher- a lifer! Hungry fella? She has a fish (or something) in her mouth here: You can tell it's a female in this picture (although very distant and out-of-focus) because of the rust-colored markings (red chest band) on her breast. I read up on All About Birds and learned that Belted Kingfishers are one of the few species where the female is more brightly-colored than the male. They hunt by watching the water from their perch or hovering above, and then dive head-first into the water. They then fly to a ...

It was toward the end of my walk home yesterday that I heard this little guy and stopped to get some close-ups. This juvenile downy woodpecker (note the red on its crown) was pecking away on what appeared to be a sapling, or just a very small tree. I was surprised by that, but there must have been something inside it was trying to get at! Look at the red on its chest- is that coloring normal? I didn't see any mention of it in my guidebooks. I thought it just bumped into something messy like fruit on a tree. Note the black bars on the outer tail feathers. This is one of the ways to distinguish a Downy Woodpecker from a Hairy Woodpecker, yet apparently some Hairy Woodpeckers do show this. In which case the Downy's smaller size would be the giveaway.