Send me a Sign? Certified!

No, not that kind of certified. Got this sign a few weeks ago from the "Audubon at Home" program. We had a visit from an Audubon at Home Ambassador from the Audubon Society to look at the backyard and tell us what we needed to do to become certified. Requirements for the program are that you provide food, shelter, water, and have a certain number of target species visiting the yard. After a tour of the back yard and going over the checklist of target species (certain birds, amphibians, butterflies, etc.) it was determined that the visit was mainly a formality. A nice moment during the visit was when a male Common Yellowthroat (a warbler) landed in the yard minutes after I explained that we didn't see warblers in the yard very often. More information on the Audubon at Home program can be found here: http://audubonva.org/

In other news, my last post mentioned that feeder activity had lessened. Well, the last few days it's really picked up- the Hairy Woodpeckers that came back one at a time decided they like the new suet cake I put out this morning and both of them showed within minutes of my putting the cake out- I watched the male break off a chunk of suet and feed it to the female. Also liking the suet yesterday was a large male Common Grackle who did something interesting. Perching on the suet feeder spinning around like they usually do (the Woodpeckers seem far more stable) he broke off a big chunk of it, ate a few pieces, and then took the remaining portion down to the pond where he swished it around in the water for a bit before flying off with it, probably to feed a baby.

Also noted were quite a few visits by Hummingbirds- I was standing near the feeder at one point and heard the whirring sound of one of them coming to the feeder not more than three feet away. For something that small they're pretty fearless.