Day # 17 - Date : Tuesday, October 31, 2017

This is the last of my regular Woodpeckers, the glorius Pileated. The largest and probably my favourite. At the present time I have only 2 that are coming regularly to my feeding stations. But during the early summer it was a real boon year. It appears that it was a very good year for these birds as I had a total of 7 of these beauties gorging themselves on my suet supply. There were two families, one with the parents and 2 fledglings (male and female) and one set of parents with a single female. When both families were in the yard it was a real circus, with scraps going on all over the place. I had to make sure that there were 2 suet feeding stations to try and keep them sort of under control. Most have now moved on leaving only one male and one female. Both these birds appear to be youngsters (this years birds) and not adults. I set up one feeding station right on my deck so that the birds when dining would only be 8 feet away from my location. This made them very approachable so that I could get within 2 or 3 feet of them (no pics as my lens couldn't focus). No attempt was ever made either to touch them or hand feed them, something I think would be careless and wrong. However, if I wasn't quick enough to get the suet in the feeder they would land on the picnic table beside me and eat right out of my container. Feeding 7 of these characters became a bit of an expensive proposition considering a 2Kg bottle of peanut butter costs about $6 and I was going though it in a week. But, it was surely worth it.
One of the many blessings one has as a birder to have the opportunity to interact such as this with one of tHe Lord's most perfect creatures.
Hope you enjoy my pics of this most beautiful bird.

LittleRed (Ron)

Lucky is an understatement regarding having 2 breeding pairs in the vicinity of my home. I guess the main reason for this fact is that my home backs on large Conservation Area, one created to do flood control in our city. That and as far as I can tell I am the only person whom feeds the birds all year. I have to set up my feeding stations so that they are bear proof (hanging them from overhead wire lines so they cannot be reached). Usually quite a bit of bear sign can be observed in my yard at times but they have only gotten a couple of then over the past few years. This Conversation Area which contains a small lake probably covers a copla hundred acres or so and it would quite easily support the two pairs of Pilleys. If you can hear them, with a little patience and a pile of good suet mix you should be able to entice them into your yard. Thanks for the nice comment, it is appreciated.

Ron