Happy Bird Day!*

I will say one thing for winter, I get better pictures of birds, because it is the only time of year that I fill the bird feeder, and so the birds come and pose outside my window, and sit around more than they do in the more pleasant times of the year. Today the bird feeder was a very popular place (and why not? There is still over a foot of snow on the ground, and this is probably the only place they can find food at this point). Here's the impressive array of birds that came to the feeder today, starting with...

Backyard Bird of the Day

 I am pretty sure this is a red-bellied woodpecker. I didn't get a look at its belly, but I think that's what it is. You might think that this should be called a red-headed woodpecker, especially if you could see the barely-there tinge of red on its belly, but if you ever saw a red-headed woodpecker, you would know why that one got the nod for the name. And it's not the kind that looks like Woody Woodpecker. Those are pileated woodpeckers (I should look up what pileated means... but I am not going to...). (Okay, I just did. It comes from the Latin word for capped. Which makes sense, I guess).

 Nope, can't really see that red belly...

 Sorry, red-belly, your time is up at the feeder.

 Enter grackle, exit red-bellied woodpecker - you can just see it leaving on the right side of the picture.

 Grackles can't really do the balancing-on-the-birdfeeder-perch thing. There's a lot of flapping that goes on while they try to eat.

 And they are slobs.

Sometimes they wait their turn...

 I am pretty sure there is a Bird Code, or a Bird Law that says if someone is trying to take your picture you should make sure that you are obscured by a stick. This is a very law-abiding grackle.

Flying away while someone takes your picture is another tenet of the Bird Code.

Also at the feeder today:

 Bluejay, waiting for its turn to eat.

Cardinals:

 Do you see the grackle in this picture?

How about now?

Female cardinal

Red-winged blackbird

Mourning doves were hanging around, too, but they are seldom on the feeder. They mostly forage on the ground where all of the messy birds drop the seed.

 I know this is horribly out of focus, but look at how they are making that cheesy heart-made-of-doves shape. This picture highlights the difficulty of taking pictures through windows. The angle of shooting through the glass of the storm door made it impossible to focus. Fortunately for the two pics above, the doves didn't fly away (like the rest of the birds did) when I stepped outside.

 The doves also like to sit on the rock in front of the feeder.

 Look closely at this sequence... Fluffing up...

Shaking out... You can see at least one fleck of something coming off the right wing at the top...

 Here you can see a couple of flecks of something still falling to the right of the bird.

There were a lot of sparrows around the feeder, but mostly on the ground, rustling in the leaves. I am not sure why, but the area behind the bird feeder is the one part of the yard that is mostly clear of snow.

 Hopping...

Flitting to a new perch

 Juno (aka snowbird)

 Tufted titmouse

 Calling for someone

I think this is a crow. It was not in the feeder area, but I had to include it.

Sometimes the birds are very rude about pushing each other aside to get at the feeder, but sometimes they are very polite and wait their turn. Sometimes they even share:

Hanging out together after lunch

Often when I am watching the birds out the window, all at once all of the birds on and around the feeder, including those on the ground and in nearby trees and bushes, will suddenly take off and flee. I usually can't see what has spooked them, but there is always the possibility that a predatory bird has just flown over. Today all of the birds bolted and I happened to see something in a tree not far away:

 I still don't have the ability to identify raptors, but here it is - a hawk or falcon. Now, I didn't see it land, but I assume that this is what spooked the other birds. I am surprised I didn't at least see the movement of it coming into view, because I was not looking through the camera at the moment all of the other birds fled, but I didn't see it.

 It sat for a couple of minutes, preening...

 Looking around...

And then if flew away.

There are two notable (to my mind) absences to this daily bird census: Chickadees, which I didn't see at all today, and have barely seen this winter (they may not like the mix in the feeder, which might not have sunflower seeds, come to think of it), and robins. I did see a robin flying, but they don't hang out at the feeder, because they eat bugs and fruit, not seeds.

*Re: the title of this post. Bird Day is not an official designation in this instance. I just liked that title, and this post is mostly birds.

There were a couple of other visitors to the backyard today - a couple of regulars this winter:

 High-tailing it out of there. Usually if I go outside when the deer are out there, they will run away immediately, but today I inched my way outside and they actually hung around for a few minutes before taking off. They did two interesting things while I was out there. One was this high-tailing thing. That is usually what they do when they run away, but these two just walked away. I have never seen them do that and just walk away. I assume that the tail lifting thing is supposed to be a white flag warning to other deer nearby. Which leads me to the other interesting thing. These are both young deer, and they are sometimes in the yard alone, and sometimes accompanied by one or more adult females. Today it was just the two youngsters (one older than the other), and the larger one several times stomped and pawed at the ground as they were walking away. It was a peculiar thing to see - a deer stomping on the ground as it walked. I am guessing that this was also a signal to other deer nearby (though I didn't see any), but it could also have been a threat display to me. As you can see from this picture, it was not effective. I was not the one that high-tailed it into the woods.

Now, you didn't come here to see birds and deer, I know. This is a bug blog! You came here to see bugs! The problem is, it was freezing outside again today. We eventually reached 33ºF in the late afternoon, but for most of the day it was below freezing. Not good bug weather. However, I went out to see if I could find anything under the board, and I found something surprising:

 A cricket! I know that probably doesn't seem surprising, because you and I both know there has been a cricket living under there all winter. And in fact, that cricket was still there today, but this cricket was there, too! This is a different cricket! I am not saying that because I can tell them apart, but because there were actually two crickets, The Cricket in its usual spot, and this new cricket about 6 inches away. It disappeared while I was looking at something else (a beetle like the one from the other day, which I did not get a good picture of because it was scurrying too fast), and I don't know where it went. But I was happy to see a second cricket.

I also found this. I don't know who it belonged to.

Most of what I have in my backyard at the moment is still this:

 Snow. Yes, there is less of it now, but there is still at least a foot of snow covering most of the yard. In fact, we got about 6 more inches from Friday night into Saturday. That has all melted from the driveway, but it's hanging around in the yard. I just looked at my pictures from last year, and saw that the few crocuses in my backyard bloomed right at the beginning of April last year. I don't think there is any way that is going to happen this year. We might not even be to bare ground in the places they sprout by then.

 Still, it is melting. You can see the ground here in the background...

 And it's pretty, I'll give you that.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Another Under-the-Board dweller