This hummingbird arrived about a week ago. It has been visiting my coral honeysuckle vine often and lingering long enough for me to leave the room, get my camera and take several minutes worth of pictures.
I'm glad to see that she (he?) prefers the vine to the sugar water feeder that is nearby. Last year, I was expecting hummers on my turk's cap blooms, but the birds opted the "fast food" feeders. It was disappointing. The blooms seems like a more wholesome food.
Yesterday, I was very excited to learn that my dying maple tree is good for something. A pair of golden fronted woodpeckers that live in the area have chosen it for their nest.
Within the last week and a half, I've noticed that the usually timid woodpeckers have been strangely vigilant about chasing other birds away from the tree. This explains it. The pair is probably incubating eggs in there. If all goes well, in another week or so there will be 4-5 babies, and about a month after that, they should be fledging. The maple tree is not long for this world. It has a lot of problems. It still hasn't leafed out, but thank goodness. If it had, we might not have seen the nest.
This is the male woodpecker. I can tell because he has the red splotch on his head. He's very furtive about taking peanut butter from the tree so forgive the bad shots, but I wanted you to see the proud parent.
