Our birdy feeders have been seemingly sparse lately, or so we thought but then we realized we have attracted bully birds to our porch. The crows have always been a welcome bird. For the most part they do not harm or disturb the other little birds. We began feeding them and then branched out to other birds. Soon, we had many birds and the pigeon showed up. Again, they came but did not disturb the other birds. They ate and left. So, we did not fret about them. But now a host of House Sparrows and a chattering of European Starlings have showed up and well, these birds are menacing. They swoop in and frighten off the small birds. They even chased off our frequenter
Downy Woodpecker Archive
We have a previous post about the Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens), the most common woodpecker in North America, but we did not give a lot of information in it. Since then we have seen this woodpecker many times at our feeders and would love to share a bit more about them, including some excellent photographs we took this weekend. The Downy Woodpecker is black and white with dots along the wings, two white bandit stripes on the face and some red on the back the male’s head. Although, that description could be applied to a few woodpeckers—the hairy woodpecker, the red-cockaded woodpecker, the yellow-bellied sapsucker etc. You can distinguish the Downy Woodpecker from others by its size. While not the smallest woodpecker in the WORLD—that
I watched for an hour and a half and this was my official count: 5 House Finches (2 males, 3 females) 3 Dark-Eyed Juncos 2 Red-Breasted Nuthatches 2 Downy Woodpeckers (One male, one female) 5 Chestnut-backed Chickadees A dozen or more Black-Capped Chickadees 1 Stellar’s Jay 5 American Robins (1 male, 4 females) 3 dozen or more Mallards 1 – 2 dozen American Crows 4 Song Sparrows 3 Spotted Towhees
We added an arm to the bird feeder on the back porch and then added a suet case. This has attracted a few new birds. We will try to get photographs of them sometime soon. However, one regular visitor now is the downy woodpecker. He hangs out for long periods of time, pecking away at the suet. How adorable! =) They are similar to the pileated woodpecker (think woody wood pecker) but they don’t have the red tuft and are much smaller. The downy woodpecker is the smallest woodpecker in North America. It likes to eat insects, larvae, eggs, sunflower seeds and suet from backyard feeders. They are found throughout Washington State year-round. Lucky us! =) We have since added another post about the Downy