Now that the bears are safely tucked up asleep hibernating, and now that snow lies deep on the ground (some days, anyhow), many local thoughts turn to bird feeders.
*Thanksgiving to Easter is a good feeder schedule here in bear country, and we’re doing the bruins a favor if we don’t lure them in. Bears are dangerous just by virtue of their size, and habituating them to human dwellings as a source of food spells tragedy… a fed bear is a dead bear.
*But as this stage, we can feed the birds safely. I find that they love three foods above most others: suet; peanuts; and black-oil sunflower seeds.
*I also provide nyger or thistle seed, though they mostly ignore that until the sunflower runs out.
*Even in the cities and the villages, feeders can bring in an impressive array of species. Have you ever noticed the woodpeckers?
*They seem to go especially for the peanut and the suet, though of course they’ll also take seeds.
*Maybe the most-seen woodpecker at many feeders is the downy woodpecker. It’s largely black, with a white back, white underside, and some white speckles on the wings. It has a small red spot on the back of its head, but this is often hard to see.
*Downies are about six inches in length. I have a hard time estimating size, so I measured a couple of prominent points on the feeder, six inches apart. Then I always have an exact comparison to check the size of the birds.
*All the woodpeckers have relatively long sharp beaks, which they use like chisels or jackhammers to break into trees after insects. Watch a downy at the feeder and you’ll see that he attacks the seed the same way, darting his whole head forward in attack.
*Most woodpeckers have feet constructed such that they usually don’t perch on twigs or branches, as most of the songbirds do. Instead of keeping their feet under themselves they swing them forward, sinking their talons into the trunk of the tree. They hang there upright, using their tails as a prop against the tree.
*But we also have a larger woodpecker, the flicker, that spends a lot of its time on the ground, hunting for insects there. Flickers have speckled breasts, with dark “gorgets” at their throat. There’s no crest, but they do have “mustache” stripes running back from their long beaks. (These are often hard to see.) A flicker is bigger than a downy woodpecker, even noticeably bigger than a robin. It shows a white rump when it flies.
*Although generally groundfeeders, at this time of year flickers will often come to your feeding station.
*Red-bellied woodpeckers are easy to mistake for flickers… they have the same general size (about like a robin, in this case), coloration, and ground-feeding behavior. But the red-belly has a striped “zebra back,” and white wing patches when it flies. The male red-belly has a red “helmet,” while the female has red only on the back of the neck.
*What neither one of them has, particularly, is a red belly, at least not so as you’d notice it from your window. A lot of these names were originally given by guys with magnifying glasses, studying carcases in dissection pans.
*We also have two other woodpeckers that are fairly common, but not too often seen, since they prefer to hang out deep in the woods. The hairy woodpecker looks much like the downy, but is half again the size. The pileated woodpecker is as big as a crow, with an impressive crest and white wing undersides when it flies.
*We could also mention two other feeder guests who, like the woodpeckers, prefer the trunks of trees to the branches. These are the nutchatches… one of them white-breasted and the other… less common, and about a third samller… the red-breasted. They hunt for insects on the surface of a tree trunk, usually starting at the top and working their way downward… the “upside-down bird.” They’ll often hang on your feeder head-down, stocking up for these cold winter nights.