Baby boom

It is that wonderful time of year when the young birds start coming around to the feeders.  A noisy family of grackles showed up a few weeks ago, with parent being harassed by three hungry kids. It's always a treat seeing the big grackles trying to balance themselves on the little tiny feeder perches long enough to get some seed out. Not quite as, erm, "graceful" as the Blue Jays, but still entertaining.

The last couple of days we've had a juvenile Downy Woodpecker hanging around the peanut feeder. We don't get many woodpeckers in our neighbourhood, so every time one comes around it's an event. And a learning experience, in this case: this little guy led me to reading about differences in head pattern, trying to determine whether one could tell apart individual birds on that basis, which is what made me realize he was a juvenile in the first place.


Here's last winter's male Downy with his sharp black and white colouring and the discrete red spot on the back of his head.


And here's the juvie from this week. Scruffier, greyer on his belly, and with a spread-out red wash over the entire crown. Also tiny, oh my goodness, he's so small, it's adorable.

The other locals - the Cardinals, Chipping Sparrows, and Chickadees - haven't starting coming by with their kids yet, nor have the inevitable Cowbirds shown up to mooch. But I've been hearing some baby Chickadees out back lately, trying very, very hard to sing like mom and dad, so it's only a matter of time.