The weather has been angry again this weekend, with unrelenting wind, the occasional shower of hail and fierce rainstorms. Now that there is a break in the onslaught and a few hours of sunshine, some of the birds have been returning to the feeders that had been absent – at least at the times that I was watching – there was even a blackbird sunning itself on the lawn.
At one point I saw the female woodpecker on the cone peanut feeder. I knew it was the female even before I could see the back of her head because she was digging into the nuts at the bottom of the wire cone, hanging horizontally on the feeder. Once of twice, during the few minutes that I watched her, something startled the birds in the garden, with the flock of sparrows and chaffinches on the lawn, a couple of dozen of them, scattering into the trees and the hedge motel. When this happened the woodpecker pivoted upright to hang motionless and vertical on the far side of the feeder until the little birds returned.
thekitchensinkbirdwatcher 