Today I saw an hairy and a red bellied woodpecker at the same time travelling up and down on the trunk of our white pine we put a suet cake on. The hairy woodpecker was an unusual visitor. A hairy woodpecker looks just like a downy woodpecker–just bigger. For months we stopped putting out birdseed because a bear visited our property one time too often destroying our gate during one visit. Our dogs were no help: they slept right through all the bear’s visits. My wife once saw the bear standing in the yard at night munching on birdseed on the ground.

It Is A Mystery To Me

Author: siggy

It is a mystery to me when birds come to my feeders.  Sometimes the dogs chase them away.  Other times I don’t know why they don’t come.  There is birdseed there.  I just don’t know.  It is always puzzling to me that I can put out a new suet cake and the birds find it almost right away.  And that is after I have been out for awhile.  The birds provide such pleasure.  In the spring I noted we have quite a few goldfinch.  Sometimes there are so many I see them at two different feeders–the sunflower and thistle feeder.  It always amazes me that one will sit on the thistle feeder for five minutes at a time feeding.  The males are reverting to yellow, again.  We have been having three different kinds of woodpeckers come to eat the suet:  downy, red bellied and now hairy.  The hairy woodpecker has become a regular visitor.  In the past, we hardly ever saw one.  At least one knows about the suet.  The hairy woodpecker is twice the size of the downy.  Though somewhat similar in markings.

I just put out a fresh suet cake for the birds and a white breasted nuthatch found it within seconds.  That amazed me:  that a bird would find it so quickly.  I wonder what keen senses birds must possess to locate food.  Is it smell or sight or was it just coincidence that the bird found the suet cake so quickly.  It could be habit.  I regularly put suet out for the birds, particularly for the woodpeckers.  I just wonder about that.

In a short time–twenty seconds–I saw a Carolina wren, a brown creeper, the ubiquitous titmouse and a red bellied woodpecker–all from my window.  They were feeding on the birdseed I put out on the ground plus the suet cake placed next to the trunk of my large white pine tree.  The woodpecker took a chunk of fat from the suet cake and disappeared.  I could never understand why it is called a red bellied woodpecker.  The red is on its head not its belly.  It is a big magnificent woodpecker I never saw before I started putting out suet cakes regularly.

The small sized downy woodpeckers are more frequent visitors than the red bellied woodpeckers.  Sometimes you can see two or three downy woodpeckers at one time although they maintain their space between each other.  They march up and down the pine tree stiffly like they are at attention.  The Carolina wren is a big wren as far as wrens goes–maybe the biggest and feeds on the ground as well at the suet.

The brown creeper is a nondescript little brown bird with a curved beak that does just that creep up and down the trunk of the pine tree.  It occasionally can be found on the ground but usually is found on the trunk of the tree going up and down the tree.  Of the four birds, it comes here the least.  These birds mentioned can be found here all year around.

Every once in awhile I spot a new bird and become excited.  The latest was a red-cockaded woodpecker that came every day for a few days although I saw no red on it.  It took several visits before I could make a positive identification.  It is a midsized woodpecker between the size of a downy and red bellied woodpecker.  I had never seen one before.  Watching birds from my large living room window gives me much pleasure.