I haven’t mentioned much about my back yard bird list over the past couple weeks. Not that I haven’t been watching. I just haven’t seen much that is new.
This past weekend, there were a couple of out of back yard birds I spent some time with. The nesting loon I was mentioning yesterday, which hopefully will produce more loons. And there was also a red winged black bird I found rather fascinating. He was doing a fly catcher sort of thing, hovering in place for a few seconds in mid air.
But these were birds that were not in my yard.
There were a couple of others who showed up. Two… I think… downy woodpeckers? The bill is shorter than the size of the head, which would indicate a downy rather than a hairy woodpecker. Although there does seem to be white along the outside of the tail feathers, which would go the other way. There were two of them, neither had red on the head, so I’m thinking maybe juveniles. In any case, they spent the entire afternoon pecking away at any wooden surface they could find.
They seemed to be carefully going through everything made of wood, eating any insect they could find, which is fine by me. Overall, they seemed to do a pretty good job. I was pleased with the result and fairly sure I could be certified as an insect free zone.
That is until evening rolled around. It would seem they missed a few mosquitoes. More than a few.
