BigLoad
Trail Wise!
Pancakes!
Posts: 12,053 
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Post by BigLoad on Mar 19, 2021 9:54:39 GMT -8
I did see three Pileated Woodpeckers on one big maple in my woods this morning. I love Pileated Woodpeckers and feel so lucky that we see them often. Some great music venues, too. I got to open for Jorma Kaukonen and hang out with Stevie Ray Vaughn at the Stanhope House, and enjoy the music festivals at Waterloo Village. I hope both are still going. Stanhope House is hanging on, although it nearly went under during the pandemic. It has changed hands numerous times and has been closed for brief periods half a dozen times. I've seen a lot of great shows there, my favorite being Dr. John completely solo. Waterloo Village is sadly closed. They stopped doing music festivals many years ago, and the village itself is only open for a handful of days every year thanks to a volunteer organization trying to slow it's decay. There's still a church and a small conference facility operating there. I attended numerous concerts there and miss it a lot. The stage is still ready to go whenever. I never saw Stevie Ray Vaughn, which was a great disappointment. He played at Waterloo Village a couple months before he died and I didn't go because I was too busy. |
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BigLoad
Trail Wise!
Pancakes!
Posts: 12,053
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Post by BigLoad on Mar 19, 2021 9:58:36 GMT -8
The bird sightings of others are making me wonder again what's happened to all the birds that used to visit. When I was a kid in Michigan, the skies would be dark with birds, most of all during migration seasons, but really year-round as flocks moved from place to place. I don't think younger people today can get a sense of what that was like. |
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Birds!
Mar 19, 2021 14:23:04 GMT -8
Post by High Sierra Fan on Mar 19, 2021 14:23:04 GMT -8
Migrations are so much at the whim of the wind patterns for the big flocks, places that get deluged one year will be skipped over another when the winds are different. This year I've hardly seen any Snow Geese, in the low thousands, when other years the sky is blocked by them. Though reports from places further north report their number are still huge, so I guess winds just provided a different schedule along the coastal flyway.The visiting American White Pelicans, Tundra Swans and other big visitors make up for the lack of shear numerical spectacle, while the big raptors are always a treat.
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Birds!
Mar 19, 2021 17:11:51 GMT -8
Post by autumnmist on Mar 19, 2021 17:11:51 GMT -8
BigLoad, your post reminded me that I used to see flocks of geese heading south during the fall. I haven't seen any overflying my area in some time, although I have seen them flying over grocery store parking lots. Maybe they chose a route that might offer some crumbs on the ground if they needed sustenance. I didn't realize how much I missed these little glimpses into their migration until reading this thread.
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BigLoad
Trail Wise!
Pancakes!
Posts: 12,053
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Post by BigLoad on Mar 19, 2021 21:52:47 GMT -8
I found an old pic I had laying around. It's not great, but maybe the best one I ever got of a woodpecker. It was about ten feet from my front door.  |
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Birds!
Mar 19, 2021 22:58:47 GMT -8
Post by High Sierra Fan on Mar 19, 2021 22:58:47 GMT -8
BigLoad Wonderful bird I've seen one of those, maybe twice, down at Blackwater NWR.
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Birds!
Mar 20, 2021 0:43:48 GMT -8
via mobile
Post by bobcat on Mar 20, 2021 0:43:48 GMT -8
Big load, great picture! And for anyone not familiar with them, the Pileated woodpecker is almost as big as a crow!
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Post by bluefish on Mar 20, 2021 4:03:33 GMT -8
They are not your typical woodpecker staccato rap-rap-rap-rap. They sound more like a framer swinging a 28 oz. hammer, knocking a wall into place. They produce a huge pile of chips when the hunting is good. There's a dead maple with some very large holes in it about 150' from my house. Squirrels make homes after the Pileateds create the door. BigLoad is in a good place for them in his hardwood forest with moderate winters. One of the funniest, cartoonish things I've seen in the animal kingdom was a squirrel circling up an oak and coming face to face with a Pileated that was larger than itself. The Pileated promptly rapped the sqirrel in the head and it fell 40' to the ground. Amazingly, it got up from the leaves, shook its head for about 10 seconds and ran off to a neighboring tree. My Mom and I both saw this from our living room window in NJ, and we recalled it and laughed many times over the decades.
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Birds!
Mar 20, 2021 8:45:32 GMT -8
Post by autumnmist on Mar 20, 2021 8:45:32 GMT -8
This morning's excitement: I saw a bird, and heard another one, very close to the house! The first was sitting on the roof edge, inspecting the eavestrough, but apparently didn't find anything of interest. Another bird not far away chirped from one of the bushes, and bird no. 1 flew off, perhaps for a nice morning rendezvous and breakfast. I'm glad they're still here, and hope to see more; they've always been a "fixture" throughout life.
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walkswithblackflies
Trail Wise!
Resident terrorist-supporting eco-freak bootlicker
Posts: 6,762
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Mar 22, 2021 9:40:04 GMT -8
When I was a kid in Michigan, the skies would be dark with birds Those were pterodactyls. |
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Post by bluefish on Mar 24, 2021 2:52:51 GMT -8
We stayed in a shelter in the ' dacks this past weekend and lo and behold at three in the morning I heard the electronic alarm! It went off sporadically, along with male and female great horneds, until dawn. I didn't mind and was awake, you know, the twelve hrs. of darkness thing. Thanks to WWBF for sharing that, I would not have recognized the saw-whet otherwise. There was lots of woodpeckers, but I wasn't able to get close, except for a nervous pair of flickers. You certainly can tell by the large chips a pilleated created this mess. This thread was migrating down the column, just a thought, but this one might be a good one to sticky and continue the educational sharing throughout the season.  |
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walkswithblackflies
Trail Wise!
Resident terrorist-supporting eco-freak bootlicker
Posts: 6,762
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Mar 24, 2021 5:16:55 GMT -8
After house sparrows killed our mother bluebird two years ago*, and no bluebirds last year, we have a pair checking out our bluebird house!
*I had switched seed in our feeder to a multi-seed blend, which attracted the house sparrows. Never again. Just black oil sunflower from now on.
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Birds!
Mar 24, 2021 6:27:09 GMT -8
via mobile
Post by bluefish on Mar 24, 2021 6:27:09 GMT -8
After house sparrows killed our mother bluebird two years ago*, and no bluebirds last year, we have a pair checking out our bluebird house! *I had switched seed in our feeder to a multi-seed blend, which attracted the house sparrows. Not again. Just black oil sunflower from now on. [br That's great. I've put up dozens of houses for them, but can't at home because of our kitties. They're good mousers, not birders. I live on a road that is ideal habitat with forest mixed with field and lots of fence posts for them to have feeding forays from. I've seen as many as a dozen in 1/4 mile. I need to start carrying a camera when I walk or bike it. Maybe I could make a blind on my property where the cats don't go. That's good info about the sunflower seeds. Thanks. |
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BigLoad
Trail Wise!
Pancakes!
Posts: 12,053
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Birds!
Mar 24, 2021 7:31:34 GMT -8
Post by BigLoad on Mar 24, 2021 7:31:34 GMT -8
We stayed in a shelter in the ' dacks this past weekend and lo and behold at three in the morning I heard the electronic alarm! It went off sporadically, along with male and female great horneds, until dawn. I didn't mind and was awake, you know, the twelve hrs. of darkness thing. Thanks to WWBF for sharing that, I would not have recognized the saw-whet otherwise. There was lots of woodpeckers, but I wasn't able to get close, except for a nervous pair of flickers. You certainly can tell by the large chips a pilleated created this mess. This thread was migrating down the column, just a thought, but this one might be a good one to sticky and continue the educational sharing throughout the season. It looks like somebody was running a chainsaw. |
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Birds!
Mar 24, 2021 12:50:51 GMT -8
Post by bluefish on Mar 24, 2021 12:50:51 GMT -8
It looks like somebody was running a chainsaw. It had axed a large white pine snag, mini-muffin size chunks! I heard a few, but never got close. Between the lightning struck pines (gives Pinus Strobus ,the eastern white pine a new meaning) and ash trees that succumbed to the emerald borer, the woodpeckers are having a smorgasbord in the Lake George Wilderness area. |
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