Sher and I see it everyday: squirrels hopping from tree to overhead lines and back again. This morning we saw a juvenile squirrel almost miss.
This fellow was going from the tree branch to the immediate left over to the wire. Usually a small stretch is all that’s required. He missed getting his back legs on the wire, and he ended up in the position you see. A little struggle and he was successfully on his way down the wire.
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.
It is a beautiful day partly sunny pretty warm but nice in the shade with a slight breeze. Lots and lots of birds today should be a wonderful afternoon of birdwatching.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
It was a pretty day so we went on a drive to a local park. This park has a river running through it and is home to lots of waterfowl. We were treated to an idyllic scene of an adult goose with 3 very young goslings poking around on the river bank. White ducks and Mallards were in the background enjoying the day.
We love Buck Creek Winery’s Road House Red and The Laughing Cow creamy spicy pepper jack cheese. What a great Saturday afternoon snack to share.
Roadtirement 