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Re:More Ordinary Stuff



This morning , while at my desk, I happened to look out the window to check
on the feeder birds and saw a red-headed woodpecker.  Wow, I thought.  I
can't remember when they have returned this early. We always have them at
the feeders in the spring/summer nesting close by, and then bringing their
young to our feeders during mid  to late summer.  We checked back in our
records and found them here last year Mar. 2, 2002, then April 20, 2001,
April 9, 2000, April 19, 1999.  So, today was the earliest, but only by two
days.  We usually find one here in Craven County for our Christmas birdcount
that is  over-wintering here,  but I have always believed that we get the
same ones in our yard, or their young, year after year.  One spring I
watched four red-headed woodpeckers  flying over my yard as if they were all
competing for this territory.  (We feed them well)

We still have our five Baltimore Orioles eating grape jelly and the Hairy
Woodpecker coming to our log which is stuffed with commercial suet.  Had an
Eastern Phoebe this morning perched on a Euonymous bush which I spotted
because of it's pumping tail.  It's a bush that the resident mockingbird
uses as his throne to oversee the territory, but that Phoebe's tail sure
told me it was not that 'mocker' this morning, and within a couple of
minutes, the 'mocker' came along and ran the Phoebe off his favorite front
yard bush.

Joanne Harley
New Bern,NC
harleyclan@coastalnet.com