Andrew Acomb

This is one of my favorite birds. The Pileated Woodpecker is nearly 2 feet tall and has a wing span of almost 3 feet. I’m very fortunate to have a family of four in the woods behind our house. They come visit my suet feeders daily.

Suet is a basically fat. You can buy suet with a wide variety of goodies mixed in it like berries, bugs, and different types of seeds. The Red-breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, and the Pileated Woodpeckers that visit my feeders really enjoy the peanut suet. I always put a second suet feeder out in the winter. Birds use more energy when its cold. Suet can provide the extra calories that the birds need to stay warm.

The suet feeder in the picture above is larger than most. It holds two suet cakes stacked on top of each other. The feeder’s size makes it more inviting to the larger birds.

Can you see the piece of wood sticking out from the bottom of the feeder? See how the Pileated Woodpecker is pressing its tail up against it? This piece of wood, sometimes called a “tail prop”,  allows the bird to use its tail to stabilize itself just like it would on a tree.

The pileated woodpecker is currently the largest woodpecker in North America. The only one that was slightly bigger was the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Although there have been several sightings in Arkansas over the past few years, this bird is widely believed to be extinct. I know the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is actively searching for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Hopefully, they can find something to prove its still alive.

Today we closed on our new house. Our agent, Mark Strombeck, left the keys in a secret spot near the front door so Jennifer and I could experience the first few moments in our new home with no one else around. Very thoughtful. I don’t think it really started to sink in that this house was ours until we unlocked the front door for the first time.

We started moving in immediately. The first thing I brought over was one of my hummingbird feeders. I filled it with hummingbird nectar and hung it up right away. It wasn’t long until a Rufous Hummingbird arrived. I’ve never had one show up to a new feeder so fast before. This is a good sign!

When I was a bit more mobile, long story, Jennifer and I went to the Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival. This year the festival was held on May 2nd through the 4th in Hoquiam, Washington. Each year thousands upon thousands of shorebirds stop here at the Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge for a bite to eat and a chance to rest on their long journey north. Many of these birds travel over 15,000 miles to their northern breeding grounds. The muddy tideflats of the Grays Harbor Estuary is “one of 4 major staging areas for shorebirds in North America and one of the largest concetrations of shorebirds on the west coast south of Alaska“.

The best veiwing times are at high tide, so plan your trip accordingly. The high tide will cover most of the mud flats so the shorebirds will be concetrated closer to the viewing areas. We timed our trip just right. We arrived just before high tide. That day they recorded nearly 40,000 birds. Some of the most abundant birds out there were the Western Sandpiper, Dunlin, Semipalmated Plover, and the Green-winged Teal duck.

At the main viewing area, there were employees from the Wildlife Refuge with professional scopes spotting birds and helping other spectators find some of the rare birds hidden among the thousands.  The rare birds we saw that day were the Red Knot, Ruddy Turnstone, and the Caspian Tern.

The highlight of the day for me was when a few thousand birds flew in that unique cloud-like formation maybe 10 feet above my head then landing in the mud flats just beyond the viewing area.

This past weekend, we went to The Farm in Snohomish, Washington. Before we tried out their corn maze, we wandered around the place and checked out some of the animals they had in the petting area. One of the pigs I came across was completely passed out! He didn’t even mind the flies.

We took a ferry from Kingston to Edmonds, Washington in order to get to The Farm. It’s just north of Everett in Snohomish. We wanted to go there and check out their corn maze and pumpkin patch. The fog was thick on the ride over. I wandered around on the deck outside and found a guy feeding the gulls.