More Birding from the Aerie

We’ve had two new visitors to the feeders in the last few days: a Downy Woodpecker and a White-Breasted Nuthatch. The Downy is a male with his little bright red patch on the back of his head.

Both are common birds and associate with flocks of chickadees during the winter. As the number of chickadees has grown—there must be 15-20 individuals coming to the feeders now—I’ve been more or less expecting these other birds to show up. I’ve been hearing their distinctive calls in the woods and, in the case of the Downy, seeing them flit among the trees, but they have finally discovered the suet feeder and they have been in to get their share.

So far, the Blue Jays have stayed in the woods. They’ve not come to the feeders to chase the smaller birds away. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have a tray feeder out just ones with tiny little perches. It’s interesting to hear them call to one another and even imitate the call of the Red-tailed Hawk. When I’m out hunting and they start calling, I usually sit up a little straighter and sharpen my focus when they start raising a fuss in the woods. Sometimes it means some critter is moving that I can’t see. The Blue Jays have warned me of deer, fox, raccoon, hawks and owls. But, unfortunately, what they have alerted me to most of the time was…me! Their eagle sharp eyes spotted something unusual and they were determined to let the world know.

I’ve not seen any other birds in the trees around the yard on a regular basis although there have been American Crows and Red-tailed Hawks overhead.

The Red-tail has been a common sight around the Aerie since we started construction. They (usually there’s more than one and I[‘ve spotted as many as five at once last August) use the updrafts along the ridgeline to glide and soar. Sometimes they are hunting the small pocket of a field in the woods just a hundred yards from the house, or the power-line right of way, sometimes they are hunting the much larger fields of my neighbors, and sometimes it seems they are just soaring for the fun of it.

The other day I watched a pair dance in the northern wind. They used the currents to simply hang in place and then slipped to one side or the other. Spreading their wings, they would rise vertically with hardly a movement to the horizontal. Then, by folding their wings to their sides, they would dart down below the tree line and rise again to repeat the performance. It could be they were hunting, having fun or practicing their species mating rituals. Whatever they were doing it was as entertaining as any aerial show.

We spotted numerous other species while construction was in progress but most have migrated out of the area for the winter. Only the Wild Turkey has been spotted walking through the woods and gobbling from the other side of the bowl that is formed by the curving ridge just to the south of the Aerie. But even they have quieted down since the cold weather swept in last week.

I’m looking forward to the spring migration so I can get serious about taking a weekly/monthly count of the species in the area.