Walking through the living room this week I noticed two hairy woodpeckers on the feeder. That’s unusual. We don’t get hairy woodpecers often, and when we do it’s always a single bird chowing down.
Adult male hairy woodpeckers (similar but bigger than downy woodpeckers) have a red spot on the back of their heads.
I stopped to watch, from across the room so as not to startle the. Sure enough, one of them was a youngster, eating away happily while dad was on the other side of the feeder…
The young one enjoys a succulant oiler as dad eats on the other side of the feeder.
…but happily accepting a special morsal from dad when he offeres it.
This time of year seeing parents cater to their teenage, soon to be adult, children is pretty common. They don’t seem to notice that their kids are eating just fine and on their own when they’re not being waited on.
Can you see the love in dad’s eyes as he feeds his youngster?
I’m glad I happened to wander past their special time together when I did.
That was a good seed, wasn’t it!
Note: I’m not sure if the kid is a boy or a girl. There’s no red spot on the back of it’s head which leads me to think it’s a girl…but there IS a spot just above the beak and I don’t know what that means. If you know, please comment below!
As usual, spring in Michigan is a mixed bag. Since we had 60 (15.5C) degree and sometimes higher temperatures in February we were owed several days or even weeks of temperatures in the 30s, (-1.11 C) sometimes lower, in March. With wind and snow to make everything feel extra special.
Still, signs of spring persist even here.
The first sounds of spring, the thing that solidifies the concept of spring for me every year, are the red-winged blackbirds. They announce their arrival loudly with a very distinctive call.
Feathers puffed up to keep warm in our 30 degree windy spring mornings.
I usually hear them before I see them. But a day or so after I hear them singing over in the swamp they will have found my feeder. They come in mass and gobble up everything, much to the dismay of the smaller birds.
“Hey! Do you have food over there?”
They’ve been around for a few weeks now and are disgusted, just as we all were, with that last snow storm.
And when I see my goldfinches start to turn yellow – well – than spring is well and truly on the way. It seems that one day they are all olive drab, and the next day the males are sprouting gold spots.
Diving for goodies fallen from the feeder
And then suddenly those show-offs are entirely, brilliant, yellow.
Almost in full summer uniform.
In fact yellow seems to be the color of spring. Between the daffodils, which are the only spring flowers we can have due to our hardy deer population…
Evening light warms up a chilly spring day.
…to the forsythia in the back yard…
Ok, the forsythia isn’t in bloom here yet, I forced a few sprigs of it to brighten up my kitchen.
…to the cowslips in the nearby woods…
A definite sign that spring has sprung.
…if you see an abundance of yellow around these parts you can almost guarantee spring has sprung.
No guarantees in March, no siree, not around here!
Almost.
Thanks, Karma, for hosting this photo challenge! I remain hopeful that that last snow was our last snow. If you know what I mean.
Change Is Hard 