Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Woodpeckers and their cohorts wrangle through the winter woods in search of high-energy food to fuel their active lifestyles.
Woodpeckers and their cohorts wrangle through the winter woods in search of high-energy food to fuel their active lifestyles.
A brand-new year lies ahead, full of possibilities and opportunities. Here are some suggestions for ways to help the birds (and other flying things) that bring such beauty and joy to our lives.
These long-billed, active little birds zigzag all over a tree in search of a meal, sounding like tiny tin horns as they stay in contact with their kind.
We can take steps to assist migrants and even the odds for backyard birds who battle the elements during our long, cold winters.
Songbirds and shorebirds, geese and ducks and raptors spent the summer raising their young, but now it’s time to head for warmer zones, where food is more abundant.
Remember that Coasters tune with the refrain: “He wears a red bandana, plays a blues pianna, in a honky-tonk, down in Mexico?” Well, who’s to say the rock and roll group’s song doesn’t also refer to one of the most beautiful birds in backyard and woodlot—at least until you get to the “pianna” part?
This little songster is heard more often than seen, but out in the sunlight on a summer’s day they’re among the most spectacular birds on the continent.
One of the most endearing thing about birds is how much of their lives are lived on view, out in the open. We watch them drinking and bathing, foraging for food and eating it, resting on perches and even copulating. We can observe nearly every aspect of avian life—except for the most important of all, their lives as parents. That’s almost always been hidden, tucked away inside a cup nest back in a shrub or within a tree cavity. Until now.
Because their offspring have a long learning curve, our largest owls begin raising the next generation even as snow falls in the forest.
Crossbills, redpolls and grosbeaks, beautiful birds from the far North, are heading south to find enough food to eat.