Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 21:49:16 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Janet Millenson Subject: Woodpeckers in yard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Woodpecker behavior at my suet feeder has been interesting to watch. These birds don't like to share. The two female Downy Woodpeckers regularly spend half the day aggressively chasing each other. Yesterday they got into a real stare-down at the suet until the male arrived, at which point one female flew away and the other one went after her in attack mode. It looks like they use up more energy bickering over the suet than they gain from eating it. The Pileated Woodpeckers, too big to cling to the suet feeder, hold onto the tree trunk and crane their neck backwards. There are two males and a female who visit. One of the males is quite timid. The other one is tame -- my old buddy from the past two winters who lets me walk right up to him and chat! He's hard to miss because he calls loudly and non-stop as he approaches the feeder. (Why is he so unusually vocal? A territorial thing? Calling to ME to come out?!) As a result of having three PIWOs whacking on our many half-dead trees, parts of the deck, driveway and yard are noticeably littered with large wood chips. By the way, this week the titmice started singing ("peter, peter"); a little hint of spring in the icy weather of January. Janet Millenson Potomac, MD janet@twocrows.com --------------------------------------------------- "Look at the birds!" -- Pascal the parrot ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================