Plenty of woodpeckers in Estabrook…

After taking a couple of days off, winter came roaring back with a vengeance overnight, and temps were back into the low teens by morning. On top of that, the wind was forecast to be 24 mph at sunrise, so the windchill was below zero. Yikes! At least the sun was out, so if I took a picture, it stood a chance of being pretty.

I did see a pair of common mergansers and a black duck amongst the mallards on the river, but it was too early for any of them to be soaking up any sun. Instead, the show really began at the pond today, and the first performer was this black-capped chickadee foraging on the sumac bushes. I tried to capture it up on the red bunches of seeds, but it gave us the best pose down here at eye-level.

The woodpeckers sometimes take a while to warm up, so I wasn’t expecting to see many today, but perhaps they are coasting on yesterday’s warmth, because they seemed plentiful this morning. Here’s a female downy.

And here’s a male nearby who appears to have just found a tiny morsel.

Of the woodpeckers that are regulars in Estabrook, red-bellies (not red-breasted as I mistakenly wrote a few days ago) are usually the last to start making noise on a cold morning, but here’s one up and at’em already.

Hairys, on the other hand, are often the first ones I hear these days, but they tend to be harder to put eyes on, so I was happy to catch this male to round out my trifecta.

Then, just as I had lined myself up to capture some white-throated sparrow pictures, this young Cooper’s hawk flew in, and all the little birds made themselves scarce.

The hawk even made a feeble attempt at some house finches below, and I don’t know if it was suffering from youthful inexperience or lack of real hunger, but the finches easily gave it the slip.

And that was the end of the show for today. I see we’re due for another warm-up, but not until tomorrow afternoon, so the trails should still be nice and firm for tomorrow’s annual Christmas Bird Count. It sure would be nice if a bald eagle or a great horned owl would put in an appearance, I’m just sayin’.