Thursday, October 21, 2010

Thirsty

Rocky has long had an aversion to drinking out of human glasses. All of the rest of the parrots get excited when they see us pouring juice in a glass, and they eagerly sip away; Rocky always would beak at the glass, pushing it away from him.

Thomas has recently begun drinking Gatorade out of a mason jar, and Rocky has changed his tune (we don't let him drink a lot of Gatorade; just a sip.) We still can't believe it! I must add that Thomas had tried repeatedly, including earlier this week, to get Rocky to drink Gatorade out of a normal glass. It's definitely the mason jar, not the contents.*************************
Thomas may have been late to work this morning due to some amazing bird activity in our backyard. I was upstairs, and he yelled, "Get down here now! There's a woodpecker!" These pictures are not great as they were taken through glass, plus our camera doesn't zoom well.

Here is the downy woodpecker that caused all of the commotion:
There were a ton of these little guys foraging on the ground:
I'm not sure what they were. I'm going to do some searching around to see if I can figure it out, but I'm thinking junco. Additionally, there were a ton of robins and a black-capped chickadee. When I left for work about 30 minutes later, not a bird to be seen in our backyard. I was glad we didn't miss the show!

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Yes, that's a female Dark-Eyed Junco. The males have brown backs and black heads (at least they do on the West coast; there is a lot of variation across the country).

You know winter is coming when the juncos reappear! I adore them and all there twittering noises.

Michelle said...

My Timneh, Timothy, likes to take teeny sips of 7up from the can. I do not let him do this often, but when he does, he shakes his head from the bubbles tickling his tongue. So cute!

Love that picture of Rocky sipping Gatorade out of the mason jar. Very cute, indeed.

Carrie S said...

We have suet feeders outside and we regularly see the woodpeckers. Once or twice we saw the ones that look like mourning doves.