Thoughts of Breeding

It's that time of year again with the days warming at the approach of spring, the herring are spawning and our eagles are preparing for another breeding season. They have been collecting branches to add to their nest for the last month and are now regularly copulating. We had no fishing activity in our bay this year, with the Seiners cruising past most of the local spawn was north of us.

Woodpecker Visitor's

A pair of woodpeckers attracted to my suet feeder, two quite different species, the Downy, this ones a male, the smallest of all the North American woodpeckers and the much larger Northern Flicker. Both adapted to excavating into trees in search of grubs and beetles and also to provide nesting chambers for rearing young. The most remarkable adaptation is their tongues which is slender, manoeuvrable and like the flicker exceptionally long. As can be seen in the sketch to the right the tongue is anchored with flexible hyoid bones between the eyes at the base of the upper mandible and runs in a sheath on both sides of the skull up and over to the back of the throat. When the muscles contract the hyoid bones slide forward within the sheath and thrust out the tongue.

A American Robin was attracted to the cotoneaster berries and the Varied Thrush dropped in after the recent snow

Buttertubs GBHE

Bald Eagle Lunch

Sharp-shin visitor or is it a Cooper's