Wisconsin birds

I scared up a rough legged hawk.



Off he goes!





One of these things is not like the others, la, la, la. :)



I scared the seed right out of his mouth.



He sure had fun kicking up snow!



Just cuz I love him! :0)

Backyard Birds

The little red-breasted nuthatches may be small (smaller than the chickadee), but they are mighty. They will run off other birds twice their size! lol

Not the best chickadee picture ever but he was so cute gathering fuzz.

A baby. . .robin?

Now the white-breasted nuthatch is bigger than the chickadee, but more mild mannered than the red-breasted ones.

And the little Downy Woodpeckers are content to nibble on suet and be left alone.

Magical Moment

When I get to feeling down, after I've wallowed in it a little (yep, it's ok to wallow as long as you get back up), I pull myself up, grab the camera, and go see what I can find.  As I snapped photos of this fellow I felt like time stopped.  He sat panting on the suet and I feared he was caught somehow, I slowly approached him.  I watched him, and he watched me, each step I took I paused, when he remained in place, I took it as consent to come closer.  I walked within a foot of him, and still he stayed.  I've never been that close to a woodpecker before and for a moment I wasn't sure what to do.  I spoke to him, he looked at me, I slowly reached my hand up to set him free. I was surprised to see he was much smaller than my hand.  My fingers were within a couple of inches of his tail when he let go and flew to a nearby tree.  The joy I felt in that moment was the therapy I needed.

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The woodpeckers seemed to want to play with me today. I had a pair sitting on this branch for a while, the male flew off before I could capture them together. Beak to beak they sat inches apart chattering. After he flew off, she remained and let me walk around her snapping photos.

With all the rain we're having, yes I woke up to rain again today, the lighting was horrible and I had to have the ISO way up to shoot. I didn't want to use the flash on the birds because that would have only given me opportunity for one shot. I mean, if I were 5' away from you and flashed a bright light in your face wouldn't you fly away? So these are, without flash, no tripod, in low light.

A Downy Woodpecker

I keep suet out for the woodpeckers, they seem to appreciate it.

It's a deal I've struck with them - I'll feed you, you pose for me - it works!

See, he doesn't even care that I could reach out and grab him, he just ignores the big black thing aimed at him.

Yum!

Then, he acted like he was going to ignore me, but. . .

Off he flew, maybe I did get a little too close, lol.