This morning was the first watch for my 3rd Feederwatch season. It was cold and wet outside when I woke up, but I put on my bathrobe, slipped on shoes, and headed out to fill the feeders as various birds were beginning to make their appearance. I had bought a new tube feeder to add to the peanut, suet, tray and hopper feeders set out back – a total of 9 feeders in all. I was anxious to see how my efforts in improving the backyard setting would pay off.
I counted a total of 12 species today – mourning dove, downy woodpecker, blue jay, black-capped chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, European starling, song sparrow, dark-eyed junco, house finch, American goldfinch, house sparrow, and most notably, a yellow-bellied sapsucker. I spent a bit of time watching it, making sure that I could make an accurate identification. It was a female, bending over backwards to take suet from the hanging basket, then skittering up and down the tree, tapping at the trunk. The beak, the white streak up its side, the placement of the red on its head, the white chin, with black bib - I was confident of my ID, thankfully, because when I went to enter my sighting on eBird, it consider the yellow-belly as a rare species this time of year.