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Exploring natural history one itsy bitsy spider at a time...

Exploring natural history one itsy bitsy spider at a time...

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Winter Bird Photography


One thing that makes walking around in 2 ft of snow worthwhile is the nice views of winter birds.  The beautiful shimmering fields of windblown snow and frosted trees aren't so bad either.  

Yellow-bellied sapsucker on a beech tree.  
Look closely and check out the typical sapsucker pattern he's leaving behind on the bark.
"Sapsuckers are members in good standing of the woodpecker tribe, but they are the only ones whose chisel strokes through the bark of trees are aimed primarily at getting sap to drink and soft sapwood to eat rather than insect larvae.  Often a single individual will drill rows and rows of little wells around the trunk of some favorite tree and return to them at intervals for several days to collect nutritive dividends." --Robert S. Lemmon in Our Amazing Birds, 1952
 
Carolina wren proudly singing away.
"This largest of the wrens appears to be the embodiment of the entire family characteristics: it is exceedingly active, nervous, and easily excited, quick-tempered, full of curiosity, peeping into every hole and corner it passes, short of flight as it is of wing, inseparable from its mate till parted by death, and a gushing lyrical songster that only dead itself can silence... The Carolina wren decidedly objects to being stared at, and likes to dart out of sight in the midst of the underbrush in a twinkling while the opera-glasses are being focused."
 
Eastern towhee and white throated sparrow taking a break from the search for food. 
 
White-crowned sparrow goes beautifully with the honeysuckle vine.

Song sparrow hoping this bit of dust has nutrition of some sort.  

Northern flicker (aka High-hole, yarup, wake-up) proudly reins over the young virginia pines.

My "street" (long gravel/mud driveway) did finally get plowed out last night and I safely made it to Lowes and back with a fresh supply of bird seed.  Perhaps tomorrow I'll catch a shot of the nuthatches that have been visiting.  Until then! 

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