BirdingGirl

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...