Good Weekend for Woodpeckers

This weekend we saw a lot of woodpecker action at our suet feeders and in the big maple tree out front. Our new suet log is popular. We'd had a smaller one the last couple of winters, but it got chewed so much that one of the holes was completely open on one side. This one is much thicker and should be useful much longer.

Red-bellied Woodpecker - male

The first sighting that made me grab my camera was the red-bellied woodpecker (above) - always a beautiful and welcome sight for its large size and dramatic markings. This is a male; the female also has red on her head, but it doesn't extend all the way over the top of the head as it does here. (You can see a female I spotted a couple of months ago here.) This bird stayed around for a long time, visiting the suet occasionally but mainly spending time on an upright dead branch, or "snag," in the upper portion of the maple tree (below).

Red-bellied Woodpecker in tree

Look closely (click on any of the photos to see them larger) and you can see the signs of larvae leaving wormy trails across the wood. That's what the woodpeckers are after.

Let me put in a good word here for leaving dead branches, and even dead trees, in place, where it is safe to do so. In our world of tidy gardens, pristine lawns, and formal landscapes, dead branches or trees are often considered unsightly, and removed. This practice has reduced habitat for cavity-nesting birds, including woodpeckers as well as birds that make use of old woodpecker holes, like bluebirds. One of my resolutions this year is to learn more, and blog more, about gardening with wildlife in mind, sometimes called ecosystem landscaping. Shelter, water, native plants, a variety of natural food sources, and varied nesting habitat are important elements of bird-friendly gardens. If you think about the benefits provided by a dead branch or tree, you may consider it a beautiful part of your landscape. (Note, however, that increased woodpecker activity at an ash tree may be a sign of emerald ash borer infestation.)

Hole in tree -- made by whom? 

The photo above shows a large hole in a good-sized branch of the tree, located much lower than the snag shown above. We first noticed this hole after the leaves dropped this past fall. I'd estimate the hole is three or more inches high. I've tried to keep an eye on it this winter. It's not being used for nesting, of course, at this time of year, but it might certainly be used as a sheltered roosting spot, possibly by smaller birds than the one that excavated it. The only bird I've seen approach it and look in was a white-breasted nuthatch, for which the hole is a huge entry point. During the breeding season, leaves block our view of this branch, so I don't know if we'll learn whose nesting hole it is, although the the two larger woodpeckers we occasionally see here, the red-bellied and the hairy, would seem reasonable guesses given the size of the hole. We've never seen a pileated woodpecker here.


Hairy Woodpecker - female

Speaking of the hairy woodpecker, one showed up this morning. Hairy woodpeckers are about the same size as the red-bellieds, though they apparently have more size variability. They are very similar in appearance to the noticeably smaller and more commonly seen downy woodpecker.

This female (it has no red spot on the head) hairy woodpecker hung around for a while today, so I took advantage of the opportunity to look for clues that quickly tell a watcher that a bird is a hairy woodpecker rather than a downy, since size can be deceiving from a distance. The beak size is a standard distinguishing point -- the downy's beak is small and stubby, less than half as long as the bird's head is deep (from the base of the beak to the back of the head). The hairy's beak is markedly longer -- almost as long as the depth of the head. (The angle of the photos above and below don't show the beak's full length.)

Also, it's my impression that downy woodpeckers move like small birds, with quick, darting movements, while the hairy woodpecker moves in a bit more stately fashion, like the larger bird it is. You'd readily describe a downy woodpecker as "cute," while a hairy woodpecker is a bit more formidable looking. Also, the tail seems to me to give the impression of greater prominence in the hairy. The Cornell Lab describes hairies as having "a somewhat soldierly look, with their erect, straight-backed posture on tree trunks and their cleanly striped heads."

Hairy Woodpecker - female

The suet log is a good point of reference for size. In the two photos above, you can see that the hairy woodpecker covers just about the distance from the top of one suet plug to the top of the one directly below it, a distance which is about four suet-plug diameters in height. In comparison, the downy, below, covers only about three suet plugs in height.


Downy Woodpecker - female

Except for a brief spell a few weeks ago, when we suddenly had a drop-off in birds visiting our feeders, a pair of downy woodpeckers have been regulars at our feeding stations for months. Below are a couple of close views I got of the male downy yesterday at a hopper-style feeder that has suet cages on the sides. He rested on the ledge, then approached the suet from the side. More commonly he and his mate fly directly to the suet cages -- usually, of course, the one we can't see from inside the house.

Downy Woodpecker - male

My friend Dan Tallman has pointed out that while downy woodpeckers tend to have black spots in the white outer tailfeathers, the hairy's outer tailfeathers are unspotted. Note a hint of a black spot on the outer white tailfeather, immediately above, in comparison to the all-white outer tailfeathers of the hairy woodpecker in the two photos earlier in this post. A better view of the tail (and beak) of the hairy can be seen in this post from August 2011, when a hairy visited the tube feeder right outside one of our windows.

Downy Woodpecker - male

It was definitely exciting to get good views of all three of these woodpeckers this weekend. There were even a few times when I could see all three at once. Now I know where to look for the red-bellied woodpecker at the snag near the top of the tree, perhaps I will notice him there more often.

Joe-Pye Weed with Bees

Because it's been so hot and humid lately I've not spent much time in the garden. The last couple of days have been much more tolerable, and this afternoon I wandered out with camera in hand to see what I would see.

My main backyard garden bed is a mix of vegetable space and perennial flowers, with a fair amount of weeds and grass in the mix.

Today I noticed that I have several tomato fruits developing, my peppers have pretty, bell-like flowers but no fruits yet, and my cucumber plants have been nibbled badly and are not faring well.

But mostly I noticed the flowers and the bees. On a mass of flowering thyme, tiny bees were in constant motion. Purple coneflowers are flowering in abundance, and the phlox is now in bloom. And on the giant Joe-Pye weed, standing well over five feet tall, there was a bee on almost every flower cluster. I saw one bumble bee, as well.

Joe-Pye weed (genus Eutrochium) is well known as a wonderful attractor for bees, butterflies and moths. It is native to the eastern United States. It's a pity that it has "weed" in its name (as quite a few valuable wildflowers do, including the milkweed so important to our monarch butterflies), as it may sound less appealing to add to gardens, but it's a terrific native plant for this area, supporting our pollinators. This page about gardening to support wildlife in Minnesota has a helpful list of other flowers, shrubs and trees that will encourage our native insects and birds.

I don't know whether any of the bees I saw today were standard European honeybees, whose mysterious declines we have read so much about, or whether they were all native bees. Whichever kinds they were, they were all busy with the vital work of pollination, and I thank them.

Prairie Partners/Wild Ones - Landscaping for Biodiversity

In the spirit of my recent post about gardening for wildlife, I'd like to share some information a birding friend passed along to me about Wild Ones, a national not-for-profit environmental education and advocacy organization that promotes environmentally sound landscaping practices to preserve biodiversity through the preservation, restoration and establishment of native plant communities. This is such an important endeavor, and one I am happy to help publicize.

The Northfield Prairie Partners chapter holds monthly meetings, typically on the second Thursday of the month, at the Northfield Public Library. There is a meeting tomorrow evening, March 8, at 6:30:

Creating Pollinator Habitats - Danielle Waldschmidt
Danielle is a conservation technician at Rice Soil and Water Conservation District. She has a BS of Environmental Sciences from the University of Minnesota. Bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, flies and some beetles pollinate more than 70% of flowering plants. Danielle will show us how we can help provide habitat for them in our yards and neighborhoods.

Topics covered in future months include Frogs and Toads, Woodland Wildflowers, and Butterflies and Their Gardens. I am excited to learn of this group's existence, and plan to start attending their events when I can.

In Minnesota there are five other chapters in addition to the Northfield one. There are also chapters in ten other states.

Gardening for Wildlife

This blog claims to be about nature and garden, but the garden side of it has not had a lot of attention since its first couple of years. And since I shifted my focus primarily to birds and other encounters with nature, any gardening posts I have written seem like an abrupt switch of topic.

But there's a reason I subtitled this blog "Nature and Garden in Northfield, MN." It's because I feel that the garden, in its largest sense (not just a vegetable patch or a flower bed, as in common American usage, but a plant-focused environment that we design and manage for our sensory pleasure and leisure use, as well as sometimes for growing food) is absolutely linked to nature. So are farming and the other ways we use or misuse land, and that's one of the reasons I'm passionate about sustainable agriculture and land use policy. Nature isn't something detached from everyday life and food production; they are inextricably linked, and gardens and farms are two of the main places where nature and culture intersect. (Michael Pollan's book Second Nature is a wonderful exploration of this truth.) I've always been repelled by the notion of a garden as completely under human control, where insects (beneficial as well as destructive) and weeds are ruthlessly poisoned for a more "perfect," blemish-free appearance. That's not perfect to me; that's the antithesis of what a garden should be, and in gardens like that the hum of bees and the singing of birds tend to be silenced.

On the page of this blog called The Bookcase that Became a Blog, I wrote:

Penelopedia, the blog, came to be when I realized I had a cluster of interests that seemed to me fundamentally related. The way I realized this? I had a special bookcase near the kitchen that housed all my cookbooks and food magazines, organic gardening books and magazines, frugal living guides, Mother Earth News magazines, and field guides for birds, insects, wildflowers, trees and regional wildlife. That bookcase was essentially a blog waiting to happen. And then I read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about the pleasures and values behind leaving behind much of the industrialized food system and eating locally and traditionally raised food, and everything seemed to come together: respect for nature, animals, natural and traditional foods, sustainable food production that preserves biodiversity and doesn't abuse animals, simpler ways of life including growing your own food, and the deep importance of place.

We feed birds year-round and have added to our feeding program over time to invite a greater variety of birds to our feeders. Watching birds and learning more about them so I can explain what I've seen have been an easy focus for my interest in noticing the intersections between our daily, distracted human lives and the natural world around us. It seems to me now that the natural evolution of our birdfeeding program is to take what we have learned about birds' needs to make our generously sized yard more of a garden: a place where nature and culture intersect for the benefit of both, where birds and other small creatures can find shelter and sustenance while we humans can enjoy a pleasing view, a peaceful respite, and some home-grown food.

So this year, while planning our most extensive vegetable garden in several years, we're also starting to think more creatively about how we might use our outdoor space in support of the birds I love to photograph and write about. We're already well along that path. There are good features in place, from purple coneflowers and some other native plants, to a few established shrubs (good shelter for birds); to medium-sized and mature trees (and more nearby). We've been using a heated birdbath to provide welcome water for wildlife throughout the winter. And we garden organically for the most part and we never use pesticides in our garden. But there is more we can do.

We're going to get some advice from our friend Mary, a master gardener, editor of Northern Garden magazine, and author of the My Northern Garden blog. And we've been looking at websites like Ecosystem Gardening and the National Wildlife Federation's Garden for Wildlife. I've also been collecting landscaping-for-wildlife ideas (and other gardening and birding links) on Pinterest.

We're leery of taking on a larger project than we can manage in a growing season, so our steps will be modest. But I'm feeling energized by this vision, and I look forward to reporting on our progress.

And so here at Penelopedia, along with plenty of continued birdwatching and phenology and the rest of my typical fare, I hope to weave in a greater focus on gardening for wildlife -- thinking purposefully about how to make our little portion of the outdoors more hospitable to birds, butterflies and other creatures that may pass through. I also welcome hearing about your experiences and any advice you have on creating a more nature-friendly garden.