Oh, Gros

I’ve left my birdfeeder up later than usual this year. Nothing special, it’s just that the timing of when I bought a bag of sunflower seeds was a bit late, and I like to use up what I have. Otherwise I tend to find old dead dessicated mice in my seed bin.

So I’ve had some different visitors to the birdfeeder.

Who knew that woodpeckers ate sunflower seeds?

Here’s a downy woodpecker, one of three, that’s been visiting the feeder lately.

Downy Woodpecker

I’m sure orthinologists (and bird-watchers) are aware of this behavior, but I sure wasn’t.

Are You Down With That?

Then, after he spent a short time at the feeder, he headed over to a nearby tulip tree and spent some time poking at it.

Downy Pecking Wood

Then it was back to the feeder again.

Back to the Seeds

I was worried it was a hairy woodpecker instead of a downy. As far as I can tell, the only real difference is their size. The downy is 5¾ inches tall while the hairy is 7½. Fortunately, I could go out to my feeder and measure it to find the height of the bird.

It was definitely a downy woodpecker.

And then it headed back to the tree (and I caught it on take-off).

Back to the Tree

It must have done this back and forth at least 5 times (which gave me an opportunity to throw out a bunch of photos that didn’t turn out).

 

The other new visitor we’ve had is a few rose-breasted grosbeaks.

Grosbeak

They overwinter farther south, and then migrate up here in the spring.

Rose-Breasted

This little guy perched and posed for me for a while.

Rose-Breasted and Gros-Beak

Finally, he, too, checked out the feeder. In this case, I’m not surprised at all that a grosbeak would eat sunflower seeds. Their large beaks are perfect for cracking open large seeds.

Wings

There’s nothing better than a winged photo.

PS. Their beaks are not “gross”, but “gros”, the French word for “large”.