Friends in Patient Waiting

All winter long, we are accompanied by chickadees on our rambles, and they show no fear of us, dancing from branch to branch, gathering around us in exuberant flocks and chirping as we filled their feeders.  Sometimes they sit on our hats or our shoulders as we do our appointed thing and top up their smorgasbord.

It has taken much longer to gain the trust of the resident woodpeckers, but I am happy to relate that we seem to have come to an agreement with the resident "downies" and "hairies", and they no longer chatter in alarm and scurry off into the cedars when they see us mushing our way up the trail in their direction.  I was delighted to get close to this one recently, and he seemed in no hurry to leave - no shrill alarm calls and no frantic flight away from this doddering human with her bags of suet and seed. He simply sat and waited for us to provide his preferred nosh.

Like the stately anhinga, this beautiful little woodpecker could be called the "piano bird" because of the crisp black and white patterning of its wings and torso. The bright red spot on the male bird's head is a wonderfully cheerful thing.