The Buckingham Herald Tribblog

Hate to tell you that the so called "dim-witted pileated wood pecker" [see the April 9 story here] actually was not in the same category as the cardinal pecking on a window, rather it was sending a signal that other wood peckers should keep away.

A metal tower makes a lot of noise, and this is a signal going out to the neighborhood that this wood pecker is "Lord of the Realm," unless it gets some kind of challenge from another pileated wood pecker.

Louis Quay

My bad. When I saw the stupid cardinal, I knew enough to research their territorial habits. I just did not think of it for the woodpecker.

But I took a minute to do so and found this, lifted from the California Partners in Flight web site: "Like most woodpeckers, the Pileated Woodpecker drums by forcefully rapping its bill on a tree or other resounding object. Drumming functions as a communication tool among woodpeckers, and serves to both attract a mate as well as for territorial defense."

So it turns out the woodpecker was just picking up chicks. --ST

Labels: bird, environment

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 2:59 PM 0 comments

I swung by Sparrow Pond on my morning walk today. I was looking for wood ducks, which I love for their colors, and I was not disappointed.

The ducks, which county naturalists historically have tried to make comfortable, are back. At least, one pair is. I shot the photo of them with my cell phone, so you can barely see them. I don’t know if there are more mates. Last year about 10 showed up.

From the stupid bird department...

You may recall the video I shot from my basement in February showing a male cardinal attacking its reflection in the window.

Well, we can add a dim-witted pileated woodpecker to the flock of flighty birds.

If you look closely at the image on the right (again, shot with my cell phone, sorry). You’ll see the top of the metal tower has a small bump on it. That is the head of the wood pecker which was beating the living bejeesus, like a mad steel-drummer, out of the tower’s top. It flew off after awhile.

Sparrow Pond Deluxe (Last May's coverage of the wood ducks and beavers.)

Sure They're Virginia's Bird (but they're not so bright).

Labels: bird, environment

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 9:56 AM 0 comments

“The male cardinal fiercely defends its breeding territory from other males. When a male sees its reflection in glass surfaces, it frequently will spend hours fighting the imaginary intruder,” says the “All About Birds” web site from the Cornell Lab or Ornithology.

Last year, try as I might to capture a local cardinal on video attacking the hell out of my neighbor’s door, I could not.

The bird stood on the door knob, looked in the window, attacked and flew off to a nearby bush. Then, it flew to the next doorway and repeated the process. Back and forth it flew all last spring attacking and retreating, but never attacking when I was close enough to video it. Until now.

The cardinal, as you will see in the 30-second video below, is not just saving its vitriol for the glass of doors, but for our basement window, as well. It will attack for five or six minutes at a time before giving up, for a while.

Labels: bird, nature

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 11:23 AM 0 comments

I have seen the hawk (thought it might be a falcon) numerous times in the neighborhood. One time I saw it having squirrel sushi in a tree in my courtyard.

Talk to you later,

James Vandeputte

Labels: bird, hawk, mordecai, nature

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 8:36 AM 0 comments

Miles Grant, on his blog The Green Miles, posted photos of a cooper’s hawk he’s calling Mordecai (he originally called it a red tail, but has since clarified it in a post earlier this week).

It’s a great time of year to see these birds, said David Farner, the Park Manager at Ft. C.F. Smith Park in north Arlington. With the leaves off the trees, these birds, which are really quite common in Arlington, are much easier to spot, he said.

The hawk at left, caught on camera at the corner of N. Second Rd. and N. Thomas Street just before Christmas, was a juvenile red-tail hawk. In an email, Mr. Farner said the blurry photo of the bird in flight was enough to identify it.

“The belly-band of streaking, the broad and rounded wings and short tail are all visible in that photo,” he wrote. “Red-tailed hawks don’t get the red tail until into their [second] year. So a brown tailed red-tail was probably born in spring [2007] or even [2006].”

The red tail might be a new resident to the neighborhood, or it might just be passing through on its way to warmer states. Many of the birds of prey have adapted well to urbanization. They can live in small patches of woods, along the George Washigton Parkway, for instance, and they’ll eat small animals.

“[The red tail's] preferred food is rabbits, but they’ll eat rats,” Mr. Farner said.

Mordecai, the cooper’s hawk, is similar to the sharp-shinned hawk. Although the sharp-shinned is a little smaller, they both feed off birds at feeders and therefore come around to homes where they can find the feeders, Mr. Farner said.

The difference between the red tail and the cooper’s is the length of tail; a cooper’s hawk has a long tail. It uses that tail to steer itself and can swoop in on a feeder using its stealth and maneuverability, Mr. Farner said. You’ll often see them flying under the tree canopy.

[It was most likely a cooper’s hawk, most likely, that had me hoping for a Northern Goshawk sighting in December 2006, and I'm still hoping, alas. –ST]

Some coopers are migrants or residents. “They can be here year round,” Mr. Farner said.

Ft. C.F. Smith Park

Labels: bird, hawk, mordecai

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 2:21 PM 1 comments