Bird-Sighting!!!

Ever since Courtney fell in love with birds 2 years ago, our whole family has become avid bird watchers! Last year we added a bird feeder and some other fancy accessories that make it super fun to watch the birds through our dining room windows.

I never ever thought in my wildest dreams that I would get SO excited every time we see a new bird! We've seen some neat ones this winter. I can't believe that for most of my life I never noticed the birds all around me. The different species, habits, and behaviors are just fascinating.

Under Courtney's inspiration, we've been gathering tons of bird books, and we are slowly getting better at bird sightings. It adds a lot of entertainment to our dreary winter days to watch the birds play in the water and fight eachother over birdseed.

This Sunday, I saw a new bird!!! I was sitting at my table, working on a book, when I kept on hearing a funny noise. I looked out through the window, and noticed a little bird pecking at the pine tree in the corner of our front yard. Then I perked up....it was a WOODPECKER!


I don't think I've ever seen a woodpecker in action before. I've heard them. I've seen pictures of them. I've seen movies of them. And who hasn't heard of Woody Woodpecker? But this was my first real sighting!!! I was SO thrilled. I excitedly showed all the kids, and they all thought it was pretty neat. From it's beautiful red head, we assumed it was a red-headed woodpecker.

THEN....today on our nice winter walk, I was walking around the tree in our front yard where we had seen the bird with Julianna when I noticed this:
And This all over the four trunks of our brushy pine tree:

From the looks of it, this woodpecker has been hard at work. Our tree has obviously been a major source of his food. I wonder how long it took for him to drill that many holes?!?. I hope our pine tree survives his incessant thirst for tree sap! Yikes, it is UGLY!!!! Eeeeeewwww.

After I did some research online tonight, I discovered that this bird is in fact a Red-Breasted Sapsucker. Obviously, his main source of food is tree sap. It lives in Oregon all the way up the pacific coast into Canada. I hope it hasn't made it's nest in this very tree. I can't imagine what my trees would look like by the end of winter if that were the case!!

If you want to see what one looks like click here.

For some more good info on this kind of woodpecker, check out this site.

At this particular website, I found out that they used to be shot as orchard pests, but they are now protected because they are considered a "Keystone species".

So I guess we'll just have to live with the woodpecker drilling ugly dripping, sticky holes all over our tree. As long as it doesn't kill our fruit trees, I'll be okay. I guess they drill shallow holes, and then lick up the sap as well as eating any bugs they find under the bark.

Another interesting fact is that the Roufuss Humingbird closely associates with this woodpecker and follows it around since it loves to suck sap out of the holes the woodpecker makes. Maybe that is why we've seen several hummingbirds in our yard this winter. They don't usually winter over. Perhaps the hummingbirds nesting near our house are also using those yucky holes in our trees to feed themselves. I guess I won't feel so bad about it if it is helping the hummingbirds.

I guess I just didn't know that any woodpecker kept on pecking on the same tree for so long! I thought they flew around more pecking a little at each one! I guess our tree is a sap buffet. Yuck. My kids were intruiged/weirded out to see all the holes. Christopher wanted to taste the sap to see if it would be like maple syrup. I told him this was a pine tree, and the sap would likely taste like glue. After that, all the kids lost interest, and quickly ran inside to get warm.