Tag Archives: woodpecker

A New Bird for the Garden

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Green Woodpecker – previous residents had them in the garden but we have only seen them in the trees next to us. So near, yet so far.

The big news of the day is that we had a Greater Spotted Woodpecker on the peanut feeder today. based on previous experience we are hoping this may become regular and I may actually get a photograph. By the time I had got the camera, put a card in (I’d been using it for working on a coin article) and got back to the window, it had gone.

It was, at least, there longer than the parakeet, and being able to access the food, should have been happy. The woodpecker was a regular visitor to the feeders on the farm and is not a problem to other birds. We were talking about how to extend the variety of birds that visit and we have decided that we don’t know.

We tried pasta. They threw it all over the lawn. we tried white rice (recommended by many people) they turned their noses up at it. We try fruit. The squirrels like it. It seems that white bread is the only thing they like apart from seeds, peanuts and fat based foods. And mealworms. It’s just that we don’t particularly like feeding mealworms. They need soaking before serving and you don’t always feel like soaking dried mealworms at 7am.

GReat Spotted Woodpecker on a feeder on the farm

We are keeping our fingers crossed for something interesting on 23-25 January, the weekend of the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. You can also do it in small gardens or, in fact, anywhere. So far 265, 725 people have signed up. One year we did it at my Mum and Dad’s house with the kids and turned up to find three jays in the garden. We’ve only had jays here twice in a year so I doubt that will happen. I also, in Nottingham, spent ten minutes waiting as  a Sparrowhawk perched on next door’s chimney and resisted the temptation to fly into our garden.

I have suggested putting cat food down to tempt the kites but Julia has vetoed the idea. It would scare the others, it makes them easier to poison (assuming you would want to) and it is, she says, cheating. I agree with the last one, as it will skew the records, but that’s just how I am – fair-minded and under the thumb of my wife.

This was going to be a post about daily word targets but it seems to have been derailed. Maybe later . . .

Great Spotted Woodpecker – and an admission that I should have labelled my photos better.

What we did next

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So, what have we been doing apart from egg-based humour?

Well, we ate doughnuts, made Halloween masks, and I tried to take a photo of a green woodpecker through dirty triple glazing. The doughnuts and masks were successful. The photographs weren’t, as the glazing and dirt mess with the autofocus. When I went out to try for some clearer photos the woodpecker (a) hid and (b) flew away.

Julia and Emma looking scary
Aaron, Alasdair and Dave (who is old enough to know better)
Group photo with Halloween masks

 

Green Woodpecker feeding on ants
Green Woodpecker feeding on the floor
Green Woodpecker

 

later I saw a kestrel perching on the brush shaft of the hooded youth statue. I got my camera, I switched it on…

…and got the Battery Empty message.

So I swapped batteries…

…and got the same result.

I then remembered that I hadn’t recharged them, because they’d run out late one day – too late to recharge at work and too stupid to remember once I got home.  Bah!

Can’t really complain though, as we got great views of kestrels and a buzzard perching by the roadside on the way to work. The buzzard was on a fence post along the new A46, perching at about eye level. We couldn’t have asked for a better view.

Later in the afternoon we cleared some beds, played a Dracula-themed snakes and ladders game (Julia kept winning) and finished off Monday’s biscuits. They had kept well, and we really should have left them a few days longer, but you know how it is.

I can vouch for most of my biscuit recipes lasting three days. If you ever find me vouching for them lasting longer, ask yourself why they are still not eaten.

At least, having seen two small falcons today, Julia was able to make a quip about the coming of night and the fact that we would be having Orkestrel Manoeuvres in the Dark.

Pop music puns can be tricky as they are sensitive to the age of those listening, but for those of us who remember the band, it’s a quality pun.

The third day

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With nine visitors with learning difficulties and our normal Wednesday six, we had a lively day as everyone decided there were no strangers, just friends they hadn’t met.

Today’s pizza count was only 14, but I had to prepare all the dough myself, ready for topping (it’s a long story featuring a glitch in timing).  Actually I made dough for 18, but we only used enough for 12, and took my two emergency gluten-free bases out of the freezer.  I used the extra dough, with a selection of olives and fresh-picked rosemary to make a loaf. It’s quite good, though the flour is just cheap flour, rather than strong white.  I didn’t take a picture, just made a cheese sandwich. It was good.

My arthritis is now playing up, as kneading the dough for 18 pizzas is not quite what the doctor ordered. Strange how when you’re young and healthy you don’t look at a pile of pizza dough as a challenge. How things change.

The keets are looking perky, and several of them are exhibiting a tendency to have a go at flying. The grey one is actually developing a taste for showbiz by the look of things and Julia says it’s almost impossible to put your hand in the pen without it throwing itself at you for selection.

The woodpecker came back to the feeder, the sun shone, a mistle thrush did its stormcock act in a tree top and  all in all it was the sort of day that makes it all worthwhile.

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Things that went badly – checking up on allergies. Things that went well – emergency gluten-free pizza bases, new friendships, Gemma’s felted teddy bear (made with alpaca wool).