photography

Brood X cicada invasion is in our backyard

/ Roadtirementvintage / 52 Comments

Ok, maybe one cicada sighting doesn’t rate “invasion”, but we have been waiting for these ugly things to emerge.  Brood X is the designation given to this bunch of cicadas, who have been underground for 17 years. You can read all about them just about everywhere.

It was long after dark when we spotted one hanging on a tarp that we had over some stuff on a couple of card tables. The cicada is crawling out of its now hard shell.

Starting to leave its shell

Doing a back bend to get out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning the cicada was beside its now abandoned shell. Usually they are on tree trunks at this point, but this guy ended up on a green tarp.

Finally free, its just chilling

Side view: you can see details of the cicada and its abandoned shell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, we’ve been waiting for the cicadas to emerge. The weather has been hot enough that the soil should have been warm enough a couple of days ago. Oh well, at least things are starting to happen. It will remain to be seen how many cicadas will emerge in our yard, or in our town. And maybe this one we have will start producing that loud obnoxious sound today.

 

Feeding frenzy, starling style

/ Roadtirementvintage / 31 Comments

Today the juvenile starlings were at it again: following parents around everywhere looking for the food handout. Today the youngsters figured out that they didn’t have to stay on the ground. Looking at the short video, you can see the gray colored youngsters in the tree, waiting for the parents to grab a piece of the suet and then feed them.

The din produced by the constant loud squawking of the youngsters was there all morning.

Red-headed Woodpeckers are nature’s show birds

/ Roadtirementvintage / 15 Comments

Today was a little wild with all the new young starlings leaving their nests, and their apparent feeding frenzy with the adults.

Then suddenly Sher and I witnessed the arrival of one of the most striking birds in North America. The Red-headed Woodpecker has beautiful crimson head plumage accompanied by a pure white body and wings that are half white and half ink black. These birds are striking both at rest and in flight. This one was kind enough to stick around on the feeder long enough for the capture you see above.

More starlings leaving the nests

/ Roadtirementvintage / 8 Comments

Adult on left feeding juvenile, second juvenile, right, looks on

Remember the post about the Starling kids bugging parents for food? Well, this behavior continued today everywhere in our yard. The change noticed today was that there were even more juvenile starlings hanging close to adults, waiting and begging for food. The groups were seen on the ground like yesterday, and now in the trees and even the utility wires overhead. One juvenile even approached a squirrel that was munching on some peanut suet.  Wrong move, juvenile! That squirrel was not going to feed you! Squirrel jumps up and at the bird.  A moment of hilarity.

Today there were many more juvenile starlings in evidence. In addition the chatter from the young starlings was incredible, and the birds actually sounded agitated and anxious. It was not a calm day.

Mom, Dad, get back here!

/ Roadtirementvintage / 23 Comments

We noticed a behavior in starlings that we had not seen before. Adult starlings were moving through the yard, doing their normal grazing thing.

Some adult feathers are beginning to show on the backs of these two starling juveniles

What was different was the sight of juvenile starlings, one or two per adult, staying amazingly close. Every time the adult moved, the juvenile stayed right with the adult. We watched as the adult would grab a worm or grub an give it to the youngster. When the adult flew away the youngster would squawk and carry on very loudly. This parent/young interaction went on for minutes at a time.

A pair of Pileated Woodpeckers

/ Roadtirementvintage / 21 Comments

If you’ve seen some of our previous posts, you’ll know that we have been enjoying feeding birds in our backyard. It is always fun to see different birds and to watch the antics of them all. But sometimes we just have to say “Wow! Look at those!”

That time came when a mating pair of Pileated Woodpeckers showed up at our tree with suet feeding stations. The male is on the left, female on the right. (We call them Woody and Wilma) We had seen the female before, but this was our first sighting of the male. And yes, to us, this was a thrilling event!

Ah, you might want to duck

/ Roadtirementvintage / 21 Comments

Here he comes, center of picture

Look closely, there is a starling who just left the suet feeder heading right towards the camera. The yellow beak is in the center of the black body, and the out stretched wings are very blurry. We see the starlings getting a beak full of suet and flying off to, we assume, their nests. According to one of our resources the young starlings should be leaving their nests anytime now.

A flash of red on final approach

/ Roadtirementvintage / 13 Comments

A beautiful splash of red

It’s always fun to see a new (to us) species coming to our backyard and our feeders. We are slowly putting together a pretty decent list of the birds we have seen. Yesterday a flash of red, white and black caught our eye. We first saw the Rose-breasted Grosbeak sitting on a swing frame.

Coming in for a landing

It wasn’t long before a second Grosbeak joined in on the feeding fun. They both found the glass shelf feeder and shared a meal together. These colorful birds are always fun to see and hear.