birds and amphibians should not try to act like people

so maybe you read our previous bird post, or maybe you didn't. that's on you (or not). but we did promise avian updates when available, so gird your loins, my little chickadees!

obnoxiousness aside, the birding continues. to be totally honest, i'm quite surprised at how into this i've become. any possible new sighting causes me (and the boys) to rush for holli's uber-camera, hoping to get the perfect photo of our subject. more often than not, the bird moves on before we can capture it for posterity. but that's not always the outcome.

case in point:  for a several weeks now, we've been hearing a woodpecker plying its trade nearby, but we've never been able to locate it. i was outside the other day (actually about two weeks ago, haven't had a chance to post in a while), and i heard the distinctive tap-tap-tap-tap above my head. looking up, i espied this spry bird hammering away at a dead branch of our front-yard maple. the tubes tell me this is a downy woodpecker, although since i could not see the back of its head, i don't know if it was male or female (the male has a spot of red there).

 

a few days later, max and i were driving home from soccer practice. at a stop sign about a block from our house, max said, "woodpecker." i said, "huh?" max shouted, "woodpecker!" i said, "what the hell are you yelling about?" he pointed, and sure enough, a giant pileated woodpecker was on a tree not 10 feet from the car, and it was not impressed with us. we've seen these suckers before, but they are still impressive. i took a crappy picture with my phone. these big birds like established wooded areas, so it's great that they are settling down in this area.

henry and i were hanging out inside, and we couldn't figure out why it sounded like thousands of people were yelling at each other outside. we went out on the deck, and the noise got exponentially louder. turns out an enormous flock of starlings was migrating through the area, and the birds decided to rest in the trees of the neighborhood. ye gods, they were loud, and i would estimate that there were several thousand of them. fun facts:  starlings are not native to north america, but they were simultaneously introduced in 1890 in Portland, OR and Central Park, NY. The birds (in both places) disappeared about 10 years later, but they reappeared in the 1940s, supposedly descended from the original 60-bird flock in NY. there are now approximately 150 million starlings on this continent. yikes.

 eventually, the starlings decided to move on from our area. when they all took flight, all of the noise stopped like someone had flipped a switch, and away they went.

so that's the bird update. and i hope you liked it, because something much more important has happened that eclipses any avian news. they're back. no, not the swallows of capistrano, or ahnold, or pantera, or the poltergeists. the door frogs are back. they've got the tapes now, so no one is messing with them again. good to see you, honorary circus forticus amphibians. you have been missed. welcome home.