Hungry Pileated Woodpecker

This male Pileated was hungry enough, in the seven inches of yesterday's snow, to allow me to stand in the open porch door and take his picture while he breakfasted on suet. His mate was nearby, but it wasn't her turn yet to leap onto the suet cage, clutch it with her long black toes, and eat. Not only that, but when they fly back to the tree trunk they wipe their beaks on the bark like it's a napkin.

This Year's Birthday Gift

Each year on my birthday I am sent a fabulous bird, so I get up early and wait for it. I know northern migration has begun because the Yellow-Shafted Flicker appeared last week, which was earlier than usual, but I haven't yet seen my Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, who sometimes is my birthday gift. Instead appeared the Master of the Woods, the Pileated Woodpecker, screaming and enjoying suet (pictured) and pecking on the old TV aerial because it makes an exciting noise like mallets on metal (that reverberates throughout my house). Some mornings if the suet isn't there when he wants it, he's my alarm clock. Wow, do I ever have serious problems! Lucky me!

When Birds Aren't Pretty

Squawk! Scuffle! This morning I saw my homie the Downy Woodpecker and the visiting migrant, the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, sparring and threatening each other on the suet cage. Not one minute later, when the Yellow-Belly was pecking at the suet, came a Starling, his shawl still peppered with white stars; he and his big buddies all wanted some suet. Flapping his wings scared off the smaller Yellow-Belly. Meanwhile, Hairy and Downy woodpeckers clung to trees at a safe distance, and songbirds, such as Blue Jays and cardinals, and a row of Starlings, waited, clinging to branches...a perfect lunch counter for the Red-Tailed hawk perched on a cedar branch high above the feeder just waitin' to snatch somebody (he likes pigeons).

Then came the biggest woodpecker of all, the spectacular crow-sized Pileated, king of the birds around here, and everybody let him have as much suet as he liked. As soon as he was gone, the fighting and sparring began again, and I wondered (exasperated, like a parent) if I shouldn't just take the suet indoors until they learned to stop fighting and share.

P.S. I replaced suet for a few days with a chunk of shortening, an ingredient in many "make your own suet" recipes. Birds no matter how cold or greedy did not like it at all.