bird feeder

Northern Flicker Gymnastics

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 3 Comments

The Squirrel Buster bird feeder is an ingenious contraption. When anything heavier than a small bird (say, a squirrel for example) lands on the perch to get at the food, their own weight causes little doors to close on all the seed ports. Northern Flickers are also, technically, too heavy to use this feeder but, even though they have a couple of other food options to chose from, they clearly take this a personal affront.

Luckily they have their secret weapon, the mindbogglingly long tongue they keep neatly wrapped around their brain and ready for instant deployment. All woodpeckers have very long tongues, usually with barbed ends for catching prey, but the Northern Flicker has the longest of all of them, and their tongue tip is flattened and comes with extra sticky saliva for collecting the ants that they find so delicious.

So, back to the Squirrel Buster conundrum.

This male Flicker (you can tell by the red “sideburns”) has figured out that by hanging from the perch he can j-u-s-t get his tongue into the the gap at the bottom of the closing door. I was a bit worried he’d get his tongue stuck and we’d have a difficult conversation with the Wildlife Rescue team, but it seems he’s done this before.

Not only did he get the food out quite handily, he managed to also pick up the bits that fell out of the feeder and landed on his belly. This is where the really impressive gymnastics come in.

I’m pretty sure I saw these two, taking a break from digging up ants, exchanging bird feeder foiling tips on my dog walk the other day.

And, just in case you think it’s only the males who have figured this out, here’s a female I saw doing it in back February, so perhaps she passed on the technique to her mate.

Speaking of ingenuity I’ve been scanning the internet for COVID-19 mask making patterns, as it seems that medical advice here in North America is now pivoting in favour of mask-wearing for all to help “flatten the curve”.

So, just in case you’re also thinking about making your own mask, I’ve looked at a few and made a couple of versions for when someone from our family needs to go out for groceries. The one I like best is this one from the University of Minnesota. It seems to have a good fit, and it has a pouch to put replaceable home-made filters in (suggestions for filter material you can find about the house are included in the instructions.)

If you don’t have a sewing machine, these instructions for a no-sew mask using only a bandana and a couple of hair ties looks promising.

Stay safe and healthy everyone, and remember to take a break from the news and the graphs from time to time with some daily #birdtherapy.

 

 

 

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© junehunterimages, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Norman the Nuthatch

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 12 Comments

Norman the NuthatchI had never seen a nuthatch of any kind until Norman arrived in my garden last fall. Suddenly there he was, a tiny flying badger, making peeping noises like the world’s smallest truck backing up in the lilac tree.

Norman is a red-breasted nuthatch, close cousin to the white-breasted, brown-headed and pygmy nuthatches, and the elusive brown creeper.

Red Breasted Nuthatch in Coral Bark Maple

Now, every morning when I go into the garden, after issuing my standard crazy bird lady greeting to the assembled avian company, “Hi there, Birdy McBirdles!” — I’m looking to see if I can spot Norman.

I’ve given him a name since he’s easy to identify, being the only nuthatch in the garden. Some time in late fall a second one showed up, but after a few days of noisy squabbling we seem to be back down to one.

Nuthatch at Bird Bath

The Cornell information on them describes the red-breasted nuthatch as “an intense bundle of energy at your feeder” — and that does just about sum up Norman.

Red Breasted Nuthatch at feeder

He’s a zoomer.

Zooms down to the feeder, back up to the trees — up and down, dozens of times a day.

Pretty fearless too, whipping by inches from my head, and unfazed if I walk right beside the feeder. The other birds are off in a feathery flurry if I get too close, but Norman and his dauntless black-capped chickadee buddies tend to stand their ground.

Nuthatch upside down in hazel tree

Norman often zigzags down the trees head first, like a Skeleton competitor. He is aided in this manoeuvre by the large hook-like claws on his back toes.

Nuthatch with peanut

He’s a picky eater and will often perch at the feeder pulling out, and impatiently discarding, one morsel after another until he finally unearths the specific one he was looking for, usually a nice big peanut.

He’ll fly off to a nearby tree and jam the nut prize into a bark crevice where he can pick away at it at his leisure. The tree bark is also the source of the tasty bugs that make up the rest of his diet.

Nuthatch Call

Beep, beep, beep …

Another cool fact about red-breasted nuthatches — they smear the entrance to their nests (usually excavated in a decaying tree or stump) with sticky resin, presumably to ward off predators or would-be lodgers. To avoid getting stuck themselves, they’ve perfected the art of diving directly and neatly into the nest.

I hope Norman can find himself a mate and they will have fun making a glue-guarded nest. Maybe we’ll see some nuthatch babies later this spring.

I’ll keep you posted on the Norman News.

Windy Day Nuthatch

Norman on a blustery day, showing off that big back claw.

Nuthatch Ahoy

 

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logo with crow

 

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© junehunterimages, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Good News, Bad News, Good News

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 6 Comments

If my personal life looked like a flow chart this week, it would be alpine in aspect.

Monday started very well when eagle-eyed Phillip spotted my ring, lost for over a week, in a melted spot of the snowy garden. I wear the ring, made by Vancouver artist Joanna Lovett Sterling, as my engagement ring. Having lost the central stones from two earlier engagement rings (my own and then the one inherited from my mother) I concluded I was too hard on my hands for rings with parts that could be lost. Joanna’s ring creates sparkle just from the way it’s made, without any gems to go missing, and I love it.

Imagine, then, my dismay as the “invincible” ring slid off my freezing finger and flew in a graceful arc over the deck railing to land out of sight somewhere in piles of fluffy snow that were just beginning to accumulate early last week. Now, you might be wondering what I was doing, flapping my freezing hands on the deck and causing the ring’s flight.  All bird-related, of course. I had put Marvin and Mavis’s breakfast (kibble and peanuts) out for them on the deck railing and then gone to the garden to top up the bird bath and check on the bird feeders. While I did that, the cheeky starlings came and polished off M & M’s food. I went back up to replenish the breakfast bar, but before Marvin and Mavis could get there, the starlings were coming in for second helpings.  I was waving my arms about to  deter them when the ring went on its unscheduled journey.

The snow was so deep and fluffy, the ring just vanished without a trace. And the snow just kept on falling, with about seven inches falling the next day and yet more piled up as we dug out the garden path. Patience was required, and a couple of friends kindly offered the use of metal detectors if necessary.

Luckily no Detectorists were required in the end because Phillip spied the ring, newly freed from its icy prison, yesterday morning. Hooray. Flow chart banks steeply upwards.

Finger and ring, reunited.

I was hoping that my good luck would continue for the whole day, as I was seeing my foot doctor in the afternoon and sincerely hoped he would tell me that my days in an air cast (six weeks and counting) would be numbered.

Unfortunately that’s not the way it went. My foot is still swollen. Apparently I am not that good at staying off my feet, and the doctor sent me for another x-ray with some ominous comments about possibly needing some non-weight bearing equipment (please, not crutches!)

Sadly, this means I won’t be able to host my usual February studio sale, and there will be no snow-shoeing (with ravens) in the foreseeable future. It was in a rather dark mood that I went to bed in last night.

This morning I woke up to a cheery email from the UK about the use of some of my images in a project over there (details later) and things seemed slightly less gloomy.

Then, as I was waiting for the coffee machine to warm up and was staring out of the window into the branches, I saw a varied thrush. Such a beautiful bird, and the first time in 29 years I’ve seen one in our garden. I felt the visit was timed especially to cheer me up, bringing greetings from the forest that I’ve been unable to visit for so long. He was telling me that it’s still there, waiting for me when I’m ready.

And, while I wait (with varying degrees of patience) to get back to where the ravens are, I can keep watching my video of some of them playing with snowballs last winter.

And the flow chart ascends somewhat.

 

 

 

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© junehunterimages, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.