We got a lot of much needed rain on Thursday and Friday so Saturday’s walk in the woods was very muddy. It was nice to see the creek filled with lots of water for a change.
It’s been said that one never steps onto the same path twice and I had that feeling when I spotted a huge boulder on the other side of the creek. It stood out like a sore thumb and I wondered how I had never noticed it before. It can’t be a glacial erratic because “there are no known, scientifically verified glacial erratics in the Piedmont of North Carolina.” I will have to ask my geologist sister about it.
It’s been almost two years since I’ve seen a new life bird so I was pleasantly surprised when Sally, looking through her binoculars, identified the bird we saw flying around the tree canopy with a flock of tufted titmice and other smaller birds. My camera’s zoom lens struggled to get these cropped shots of a yellow-bellied sapsucker!
On a walk through the forest you might spot rows of shallow holes in tree bark. In the East, this is the work of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, an enterprising woodpecker that laps up the leaking sap and any trapped insects with its specialized, brush-tipped tongue. Attired sharply in barred black-and-white, with a red cap and (in males) throat, they sit still on tree trunks for long intervals while feeding. To find one, listen for their loud mewing calls or stuttered drumming.
~ All About Birds website
On our way out of the woods we found a patch of Lenten roses (aka Christmas roses, hellebores, winter roses) enjoying a little patch of late-winter sunshine. They’re not native and are not actual roses, but belong to the buttercup family. They are very popular in gardens here, probably because they are highly deer-resistant. Spring is around the corner!
Exciting new sighting! If we are lucky, there is usually at least one nesting pair of YBSS on our property. They are good parents and the babies are noisy both in the nest and after fledging, following their parents everywhere, so are easy to spot.
It makes me wonder if I’ve ever heard those noisy babies and not known what I was hearing. To be honest, if Sally, a passionate birder, hadn’t pointed this one out to me I never would have identified it. (But I can’t carry binoculars and a camera!) You’re lucky you get to see them as often as you do!
Congratulations on your new lifer, Barbara! That sapsucker is a fabulous find and you captured wonderful shots of it camouflaging with the tree barks. Your photo of Bolin Creek is a lovely!
Thank you, Donna! It was a very pleasant surprise as new lifers are getting much harder to come by these days. I’m hoping Sally will take me to better birding spots in the future. 🙂
A new birdie — woo hoo! I’m glad you got some much-needed rain, Barbara. We’re getting some this week, and even though I hate rescuing the Monk from my muddy backyard, we really need the rain. We’re a good foot below where we should be right now. Nice to see those Lenten roses, too!
Yikes – that sounds like quite a drought you are in the middle of. I hope you get some rain and some muddy footprints in your house soon! I’m waiting for the drought monitor report to come out today to see if the rain benefitted us much. I am happy about the new bird, yes – woo hoo!
The Lenten Roses are already pretty … I did see the Snowdrops poking through the earth earlier this week. They are so hardy! We have five days in a row coming up with rain – I am glad it is not snow. Congratulations on new life bird #91. A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a bird I’ve never seen and you seeing this new bird reminds me to put my Redhead Duck on my own Life Bird List. 🙂
Thank you, Linda! I hope you get to see a yellow-bellied sapsucker and a redhead duck one of these days. I remember my father saying he saw one at the birdfeeder and my mother arguing that it probably wasn’t what he saw. She did have it checked off on her life list so I wonder if she saw if before or after my father claimed to see one.
I hope your snowdrops are in full bloom now! 🙂
I hope so too Barbara. Your mom was happy to beat your dad to the punch for the yellow-bellied sapsucker. 🙂 We had an all-day rain today and expecting the same for tomorrow and Saturday (we may get to 70 and with that our first possibility of severe weather, more in the form of heavy gusty 50 mph winds as of today). The weather is so bizarre. I didn’t have the camera with me when I saw the snowdrops – should have come home as we have had rain ever since. They’ll be several more inches tall by now!
Very cool on your new lifer! I had the Merlin app ID one by sound some months ago and I could catch flickers of movement above me in the trees, but never managed to actually see it!
Thank you, Karma! That happens to me, too, with the birdsongs my Merlin app identifies – I hear so many more birds than I get to see! (And some would be lifers… sigh…)