A chickadee exits the nest with a mouthful of wood. He flies to a nearby branch and spits out the scrapings.
Spring cleaning chickadee
A chickadee exits the nest with a mouthful of wood. He flies to a nearby branch and spits out the scrapings.
My favorite picture taking birds are the woodpeckers. This yellow-bellied sapsucker bangs away on a dead tree trunk with a rapid and loud bang-bang-bang! They should call him a “yellow-bellied jack hammer!”
I hear him from a quarter-mile away and, after tromping through the underbrush, I get within 20 yards of him. He doesn’t care. He keeps pounding away and I get to take as many images as I want.
The downy woodpeckers are finally showing up around the far bog. In fact, the birds are slowly returning after our Maineiac spring of 2018. Last Wednesday was ice out on the big pond near our house. Tonight, the last snow will melt away from our back yard.
Among the Canada geese, mallards, and goldeneye congregating along the shore last week was also a bufflehead duck.
A graceful pair of Canada geese cruise by looking for a place to land.
The Maine winter weather has been slow to leave and this has reduced our outdoor time. We were quite surprised to get sorta close to this common goldeneye duck species this week.
The ducks and geese are gathering along river, stream, and pond shorelines. Ice out is still in the future and open water is appearing only slowly.