2 December 2014. I have a favourite wooded valley, I’ve mentioned it many times before, most recently a couple of weeks ago in connection with my enjoyment of Black-capped Chickadees. The thing is, it’s close to home, sheltered from the worst of winter winds, full of birds and just a good place to walk around.
So many walkers scatter seed along the trails that you can easily watch birds close up; anyone can take good photos of many perennially popular species like Black-capped Chickadees, Northern Cardinals and Blue Jays. I spent a couple of hours there today and enjoyed watching those many always-expected birds and a few other common species like American Tree Sparrow, Belted Kingfisher and American Goldfinches. A solitary but wary Golden Crowned Kinglet came close and a couple of Purple Finches lingered for a moment.
But perhaps one of the best moments came when a hungry Red-bellied Woodpecker showed off its red belly and allowed me to get a couple of illustrative shots.
The question is frequently asked why the Red-bellied Woodpecker is so named when clearly it has a red head, not a red belly. I guess there’s a two-part answer: Firstly, the thoroughly well named Red-headed Woodpecker already has the name; and secondly,the Red-bellied actually does have a reddish belly — even though you can hardly ever see it. I suspect some nineteenth century biologist who was holding a museum specimen belly-up in his hand, originally gave it the name. Still, it’s not the best choice, surely someone in that arcane corner of ornithology that dishes out names, can come up with something less misleading.
Downloading my morning’s photos I realized how the morning’s Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals and Red-bellied Woodpeckers discredit my earlier gripe about the lack of colour in this December world. It would be a bit much to post all of the day’s photos here, the ones above are quite enough. But if you’d enjoy more of today’s full colour, eye-popping birds in reds and blues, follow this link to another site, it’s where I sometimes post photo collections. Feel free to browse around it.
This post contains six photos in a gallery visible only on the website, not if you’re reading this as an email.