Back in August, I posted a photo in one of my Monday Miscellanies of an orchid that I’d noticed growing in the shade of the pines along the side of the driveway. The orchid was a Helleborine, Epipactis helleborine, a European species that was introduced to North America in the late 1800s. It was first found in New York in 1879, and over the past 100+ years has efficiently spread throughout a most of the northeast, as well as parts of the west. The Orchid Society of the Royal Botanical Gardens (based in Burlington, Ontario), has a species database of wild orchids of Canada. There, they note the name of this species to be Broad-leaved Helleborine, but since it’s the only member of the genus established over here, often the first part of the name gets dropped.

Yesterday afternoon I took Raven for a walk into our back fields. For a change of pace, I decided to wander through some of the wet cedar groves at the back of the property, now mostly dry with the onset of winter. I’d only been through them once or twice. The last time I explored I found a wild turtlehead hidden in a small glade in the middle. Most of the vegetation has now died back, and the grove was mostly empty. I noted a few bones, perhaps left by a coyote who had retreated here to enjoy his lunch, a number of rotting mushrooms now so past their best that they would be difficult to identify, and a patch of dead helleborine.

I had walked a few metres beyond the helleborine before I had the thought: “Hey, wait a minute – why am I letting lazy Brain lead this tour? Get back there and check those out, or at least take a photo of record for the blog.”

So I turned around and came back for another look. Even in death, its dried, shriveled leaves still call to mind the form of a wild orchid. You can see the broad, ridged leaves that alternate up the base of the stem, and the brown seed heads hanging where the flowers once grew.

In summer, the flowers are understated, at least compared to the ladyslippers many call to mind when thinking of wild orchids. They have a similar form, though, with a bulging, cupped lower lip and a spreading hood that shelters the reproductive parts. A single stem holds many flowers, a characteristic shared among many non-ladyslipper orchid genera. The flowers bloom through the summer, June to August, sometimes lasting into September. This photo was taken mid-August; I can’t recall now for how long I continued to see the plants in bloom after that.

Come fall, little remains of the flower that might suggest the orchid of the summer. I was intrigued to notice that the seed pods had split open, forming little cages in which the seed sat, piled at the bottom. They reminded me of little lanterns, the candle glow flickering through the bars of the enclosure.

I plucked one for a closer look. The seeds were fine, light and downy, reminding me a little of cattail fluff. It was easy to see how the wind might blow through the open seed pods, picking up the weightless seeds and dispersing them through the surrounding forest. In combination with the fact that it can grow and survive in a range of habitats from wet to dry and open to wooded, it’s no wonder the plant has had such success colonizing North America.

This evening I spotted this guy (or gal) resting on a branch of one of my orchids. When I first saw it I thought it was eating something. I brought in a couple of cuttings from the garden in late fall, and noticed a short while later that there were some aphids on the tomato. I collected up the ladybugs each time I spotted one in the house and placed it on the plant hoping they might help control the little plantsuckers. I suspect they were mostly interested in finding a place to hole up for the winter, and not so much in eating, but the aphids seem to be gone now so if the ladybugs didn’t eat them they must have died on their own. Although I thought it strange that the aphids had migrated to the orchid, both because I thought the aphids gone and the orchid’s flower scape is tough-skinned, not easy to bite through like the tomato plant, I nonetheless was relieved to see that the ladybug had found one and was doing the job it had been imported into North America for.

Then I had to look closer. Was it really eating an aphid? It seemed to be taking longer than I would expect an aphid to require, though I’ll admit I’ve never watched a ladybug eat an aphid before and for all I know they could take their sweet time savouring every bite. I was a bit puzzled. There seemed to be something sticking out from its mouth area, but it didn’t actually look altogether aphid-y.

Finally it pulled its legs away and I realized the yellowish things I’d been looking at were the insect’s mouthparts. The movement I had been observing was the ladybug cleaning its legs, very fastidiously. Perhaps because at this time of year there isn’t a whole lot else to do, it had been taking its time about it, making sure every last speck of dust was removed and every hair was in place. It looked like it had some work to do on its elytra once it was done.

We don’t really tend to think of ladybugs as having a third body segment, but the white-and-black “head” that’s in front of the red wing covers is the pronotum, the middle segment of the insect’s three-segmented body. In front of that, and usually tucked underneath as the ladybug trundles along, is the head and eyes. The big yellow pads sticking out from its mouth are its maxillae, which it uses to manipulate food while eating it, a little like we use our tongue.

For much of the time while I watched the ladybug dangled from the orchid scape, holding on by just one hind foot, equipped with a strong claw for just such a purpose. Look at the angle it’s held at. If I was dangling off something by just one limb, you can bet that limb would be straightened out and stretched to the max as I desperately tried not to let go. It’s amazing how strong these bugs are.

It’s that time of year, the transition between summer abundance and winter dearth. In the warm months it’s so easy to find something to blog about: life is everywhere. Insects, flowers, birds, green leaves everywhere you turn. The brain gets lazy, there’s no need for it to work overhard. Then come October and November, all that great wealth of life begins to thin out. You go out with your camera to find something to blog about and the brain says, “Are you kidding me? There’s nothing out here!” It’s wrong, of course; there’s still plenty of interesting things going on, stuff to find, but the brain is in summer mode. It will take some effort and time to retrain it into a winter way of thinking and seeing.

Earlier this week I took my brain for a walk into our back fields. It saw nothing, so I made it look closer. “Let’s start with this rock,” I said, “and we’ll go from there.” My brain peered at the rock and saw only rock and moss. I chastised it. “No, look closer. Pay attention. What do you see?”

“Well, those red things are pretty obvious,” Brain said.
“Good!” I applauded. “That’s a great start. British Soldier Lichen, their red caps in full bloom, to produce spores. What else is there?”

“Um. Some spikey mosses. Lots of them there.”
“Yes! Juniper Haircap Moss, Polytrichum juniperinum,” I enthused, including the italics. “Cosmopolitan, occurs on every continent, including Antarctica! It gets reddish ‘flowers’ on the tips when it’s reproducing. You’re doing good! Keep going, what else?”

“Some branchy lichen to the side,” Brain pointed out. “Wait, I think I remember these – reindeer lichen?”
“Excellent! Yes, reindeer lichen, specifically Cladina rangiferina, which can be told apart from Yellow-green Lichen, Cladina mitis, by its blue-gray colour. It’s soft and spongy after a rain, but brittle and crumbles when dry. It’s a major food source of reindeer, hence the name.”

“There’s that curly grass stuff in the little patch there,” Brain said, warming up to the challenge.
“Probably the same stuff we walked through to get here,” I agreed. “Poverty Oatgrass, Danthonia spicata, widespread across most of the continent. It can be identified by the curly tuft of grass at its base. Grows on thin rocky soil and is very resistant to drought, probably why it’s growing in amongst all these mosses and lichens on the rock.”

“Hm. Oh, look! Cup lichen, tucked in beside the British Soldiers.”
“So there is, good eye,” I said. “Cladonia species, perhaps False Pixie Cup, C. chlorophaea, which grows on rocks, among other substrates, and is commonly found with mosses.”

“And the moss has put out spore spikes,” Brain said, now getting up to speed.
“Ah yes, just on the right. Now you’re on a roll. I didn’t even see those till you pointed them out.”

“Some dead cedar leaves, from the cedars at the edge of the rocks, I guess.”
“Seems probable. Deposited here by wind or animal, do you think?” I wondered aloud.

“Look at that cute little plant,” Brain pointed to some red leaves. “So small. Any idea?”
“None whatsoever,” I admitted. “Too bad it doesn’t have any flower heads or seed pods to help. Something to look for next summer, I guess.”

“Oh, and look. It was visited by a rabbit,” Brain finished up by pointed out one final item.
“Eastern Cottontail or Snowshoe Hare?” I joked.
Brain and I stood up from where we’d been stooped over our one-foot-square of rock.
“See? That wasn’t so bad,” I said. “All it needs is a bit of practice to get you back in shape.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Brain said grudgingly.
“You did good. Let’s leave the lesson there for now. We’ll try again later this week, perhaps.”

Two blog carnivals to announce today. The first is The Moth and Me, a carnival I started up back in the March of this year to celebrate my second-favourite group of living organisms. This month’s edition is the final one of 2009, and was hosted by Susannah of Wanderin’ Weeta. Check out the excellent assortment of moth-related blog posts that she’s assembled to give us another reason to be glad the earth is not flat.

The Moth and Me will return in March 2010, when it will be hosted by Jason of Xenogere. Send your submissions to jason AT xenogere D0T com by March 13th. We’re looking for hosts for April 2010 and beyond. If you’re interested in hosting, send me a note at sanderling AT symbiotic D0T ca.

Also recently up is the 113th edition of I and the Bird. Matt at The Modern Naturalist has put together an enjoyable edition filled with quotations and verse. Matt put a lot of work into this one – head over and check it out.

Golden-tailed Sapphire by Kapitan Hojo on Picasaweb

As a continuation on the weekend’s theme presented by yesterday’s post, today I thought I’d do a snapshots of the different hummingbird species from the Manu region of Peru. There are currently 22 species of hummingbird listed on the checklist of birds of the Manu Wildlife Centre, and that’s just what’s been recorded at this one site. For a girl from eastern North America, where we have a grand total of one hummingbird species, this abundance is a veritable smorgasbord of jeweled goodness. I’ve selected a few of the flashiest for inclusion here. Since I personally have no photos of tropical hummingbirds, I’ve borrowed all of these off the net through Creative Commons licenses.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!

Booted Racket-tail by kookr on Flickr

Festive Coquette by Dario Sanches on Flickr

Violet-capped Woodnymph by Dario Sanches on Flickr

Rufous-breasted Hermit by barloventomagico on Flickr

Blue-tailed Emerald by jerryoldenettel on Flickr

Fork-tailed Woodnymph by jerryoldenettel on Flickr

Black-throated Mango by Lip_Kee on Flickr

White-necked Jacobin by The_Tardigrade on Flickr

Long-tailed Hermit by kookr on Flickr

Blue-tailed Emerald by prosper973 on Flickr

Crimson Topaz by jerryoldenettel on Flickr

(this last one isn’t actually on the Manu checklist, but is supposed to occur in the lowlands of Peru, and I just couldn’t resist including it – look at that brilliant firey colour!)

"P8200084" by teamperks on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons license

A year from today (approximately), on Saturday November 13, 2010, I hope to be stepping off a plane and breathing in the humid, tropical air of Peru. As regular readers know, I have been offered an opportunity to travel with Kolibri Expeditions to southeastern Peru. The trip is an 8 day birding tour of the lowland rainforests adjacent to Manu National Park. My particular departure will start on the Saturday, and wrap up on the following Sunday, just prior to the American Thanksgiving. I’m hoping to entice a few adventurous birders, bloggers or travelers to join me on what should be an exciting trip. We ideally need 5 people, besides myself, to make the trip a go (the trip could run with fewer, but individual costs would be higher).

"Our group and local weaver" by Dermoidhome on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

The tour will be visiting areas associated with the Amarakaeri communal reserve next to the national park. The Peruvians who live in these communities are poor, and the primary source of income currently is through exploitation of the local natural resources: logging, mining, and oil. Kolibri Expeditions is working with these communities to develop ecotourism as a viable sustainable alternative to non-renewable resource extraction. Although the natural resources are more lucrative in the short term, it is hoped that the communities will embrace the long-term benefits of preserving the ecosystems for tourism. Ecotourism would also have the effect of encouraging the natural resource extraction operations that are already taking place to become more eco-conscious, as they will be under greater scrutiny from an environmentally-minded crowd.

"Our bus on Manu Road" by Dermoidhome on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

The Kolibri trips will serve a dual purpose. The first is that a contribution from each traveler’s tour fees will go directly to the community for use in developing facilities and training local workers. Currently the infrastructure in the Amarakaeri communities is minimal – these won’t be 5-star lodges you’ll be staying at on the trip. Previous tours have camped in school shelters, for instance. Obviously it’s difficult to promote ecotourism to affluent countries when the facilities are rustic (by the visitor’s standards) at best. And yet, it’s hard to get enough money to be able to afford to upgrade the infrastructure without the tourists coming in. Kolibri has been working hard to help contribute toward the necessary funds for the projects. If every tour currently scheduled on the webpage for this trip goes out with 5 participants, a total of $5000 will be raised for the communities.

"Birding the Manu Road" by Dermoidhome on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

The second effort that Kolibri has been making with this trip is promotion of the region as a destination for birding. This is a large part of the reason for inviting bloggers on to the tour. The agreement is that the bloggers will post about it preceding, during, and after the trip. Kolibri is in the process of working out satellite internet service that would allow the blogger to “live-blog” the trip from the rainforest, providing a day-by-day report of the latest highlights, and then following it up with a more complete summary after the trip. If tour participants also happen to be bloggers, they would receive a $100 discount on the price of the trip in exchange for at least one post-trip report on their own blog (honestly, though: if you were going on such an amazing trip, how could you possibly not post about it upon your return, $100 incentive or no?).

Riverbank in Manu, Peru; borrowed from Wikimedia Commons

The Amarakaeri Communal Reserve is a 402,335 ha area that was designated as protected land in 2002. It is part of a conservation corridor that includes protected areas from Bolivia and Brazil. ParksWatch, an international non-profit based out of Duke University that helps assess Central and South American parks to advise park management decisions, designates the Reserve as Threatened, meaning that under current trends and practices there is a high risk of failure in the park’s ability to conserve and maintain current biodiversity levels over the medium-term future. Current factors affecting the Reserve’s viability include gold mining, illegal logging, and human pressures such as hunting and forest resource collection (eg., palm fronds) by a population increasing through migration.

"Hoatzins at Cocha Salvador" by Sarah_and_Iain on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

Although the macro-fauna and -flora of the area is fairly well-documented, there has been very little research undertaken in the Reserve to either study the local macro-species in more depth, or to document more of the micro-species. An advantage of a strong ecotourism industry and the facilities necessary to support it is that often research institutions such as universities or museums will use lodges as a base for local research operations, especially when first beginning to explore and research new areas. By establishing a good infrastructure in the area, it may encourage more research on the local species and habitats.

"Cocha Otorongo" by Sarah_and_Iain on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

My departure dates are November 13-21, 2010. I would love for you to join me on my trip, but if you want to go and the November dates just don’t work for you, you can still participate on one of the other departures. The cost is $1680 (or $1580 if you’re a blogger) plus airfare from your local international airport to Lima; this covers everything but your personal expenses such as souvenirs. For more information, including an itinerary, and/or to sign up for the trip (you know you want to!) visit the Kolibri Expeditions tour page.

Since the trip is still a year away, this won’t be the last you’ll hear me promote it on the blog – I have 5 people I need to round up! – but I’ll try not to make it too often. :)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 – 1918)

This poem was written in 1915 by a Canadian from Guelph, Ontario, very near my hometown and the city where I attended university. He wrote it during World War I, after witnessing the death of a friend and fellow soldier. He was apparently unsatisfied with it, and tore it out of the notebook where he had written it. The page was rescued by a fellow officer and the poem printed in Punch magazine. In 1918, a professor at the University of Georgia, who spent the war years on leave to help train YWCA workers in New York, wrote a poem of her own in response.

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
— Moina Michael (1869 – 1944)

It was from this response, and the last stanza in particular, that we now wear red poppies on Remembrance Day.

I learned the John McCrae poem when very young, in grade school. I’m sure we memorized the whole thing; perhaps we recited it as a class as part of an assembly. A portion of the poem has even been printed on the current Canadian $10 bills. Despite that at one time or another most of us have probably learned the whole thing, I suspect the majority of young Canadians only know the first two lines: “In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row”. That’s all I’m able to remember; I had to look up the rest. We probably don’t know why we wear poppies, aside from the obvious connection to the first line in McCrae’s poem. I suspect most young Canadians have never heard Moina Michael’s poem; certainly I never did (or if I had, it wasn’t emphasized the way McCrae’s was).

At just 29, I am far too young to be able to remember either of the wars we are commemorating on Remembrance Day. Even my parents are unable to remember the wars themselves, born after the second ended, although as children of the baby boomer generation they surely felt the effects on their daily lives when young. My grandfather would sometimes share stories from his war days when he was stationed in southern Ontario monitoring radio frequencies for enemy activity (I think). The only story I can remember in any detail was of him stashing a young, barely-clothed woman under his bed when his senior officer dropped in unexpectedly during his shift.

For the most part, I understand what took place during the two world wars. I recognize that our freedom today is largely due to the sacrifices made by the soldiers in those wars. I appreciate their sacrifice, I give thanks to the deceased, and honour the fallen soldiers. I purchase a red plastic poppy to show my respect, which I pin on to my purse where it won’t fall off so easily, lasting most of the year till next Remembrance Day.

But I cannot remember. The only war to have taken place within my conscious awareness has been the current one, and unfortunately, while I support the troops who are there, the war itself is not one I believe in. I can read all about the horrors of the two world wars, I can learn the poems and observe the moment of silence; I can understand and I can recognize, but I can’t relate. With each generation, the connection to those wars becomes frailer. To today’s youth, for my own children when I have them, the stories of the wars are little more than that: stories. The child knows what to believe, knows how to act, but they do so only because they are told to do so. Is it possible to engage a child to connect with a past they’ve never known?

Last year on Remembrance Day I heard a radio show by Canadian Stuart McLean, author of the Vinyl Cafe short stories (the Canadian equivalent of the US Prairie Home Companion or Lake Woebegon stories). I must have been driving somewhere for something, as I rarely have the radio on at home, and the show happened to be on. It was a Remembrance Day special, and there was one story that he told that really stuck with me, of a man who travels with his family overseas to France on a tour of a number of the sites, including Dieppe and Vimy. He brings his bagpipes with him, and offers a moving tribute to the fallen soldiers at Vimy Ridge. But the story notes that it is only after having visited the historical sites themselves that the man feels any connection to the events of the past.

The CBC shares its shows online as podcasts. You can download the Stuart McLean Remembrance Day podcast here. The whole show is worth listening to, but the story above starts at about 24:00 minutes, and is about 22 minutes long.

As I was working in my study this morning, Dan came in from his walk with Raven and called up to me that we had a visitor. I went downstairs to discover a little orange and white cat prowling around the kitchen. Raven had found him in one of the fields at the back end of our property. Dan picked him up and brought him back.

The poor thing is nothing but skin and bones and a ravenous appetite. He attacks the kibble like he’s afraid it’s going to jump out of the bowl and get away. It’s hard to guess how long he’s been out there fending for himself, but he wasn’t doing so well at it. Perhaps he’d been surviving on grasshoppers and dragonflies, which are all mostly gone now. I might have given him another week out there on his own, at most. If starvation didn’t do him in, then coyotes or foxes or hawks or fishers surely would have.

He’s extremely friendly, currently sitting on my lap as I type this. He doesn’t seem afraid of Raven, rubbing up against her and walking underneath her belly like they grew up together. It’s hard to say how long he’s been out on his own, or whether he’d had an owner at some point, although generally cats that have been wild for a long time become very scared of humans, and it takes a long while to earn their trust back.

We took him to the vet this afternoon, primarily because he had a wheeze and a runny nose and we were concerned about letting him be around our other animals, but also just to get him checked out. He weighed in at just 3.8 lb (1.7 kg), and has to be the tiniest cat I’ve ever met. He makes our other cats look huge. From his size, I figured he was a three to four month old kitten. We asked the vet how old he thought the little guy was, and he guessed about a year, based on the fact that he has all of his adult teeth, and some of the back molars are starting to get some tartar buildup.

The poor little guy, such hardship in only his first year of life! But things are looking up for him now. We’re not sure if we’ll keep him or find a good home for him, but either way his days spent out in the cold scrounging for food are over.

I can’t believe how much he reminds me of Jackie, another young cat who came to my family by similar means when I was in my early teens.

He seems really happy to be here.

Pretty much since our forced departure from our waterfront home this summer, Dan and I have been anticipating our eventual return to lakeside living. We loved the area we were in, but expect the price of real estate there would put most waterfront properties out of our financial reach (at least until the moth guide hits the bestseller lists and I strike it rich). We’ve been eyeballing a part of the Frontenac Arch that’s a little further north, a little more remote, and consequently a little more affordable. It will be years before we have the savings to make the move there, most likely, but that doesn’t stop us from dreaming about it.

In the meantime, Dan has been considering placing a MAPS station in that part of the Shield Country, since it represents a substantially different habitat type than what’s found further south, near Frontenac Provincial Park, the location of his other stations. This afternoon was gloriously mild, and we decided to head north for a few hours to check out some of the area.

Frontenac County is divided into three townships: South, Central and North Frontenac. Our previous house was in South; the area we’re now primarily considering (unless property values conveniently drop) is North. The township of North Frontenac sprawls across 1,136 square kilometers (about 438.6 square miles), of which over 70% is crown land (that is, belonging to the Canadian government). Much of the private land is used seasonally. The 2006 population census reported just 1,904 permanent residents for the whole township – that’s a population density of about 1.7 people per square kilometer (about 4.4 people per square mile; compare to the value of 19.4 people per sq km in South Frontenac), one of the lowest densities in eastern Ontario.

We didn’t see too many cars on the roads, even the main one whose name included the word “Highway”. We followed a cottage lane off the main “highway”, one that I knew passed through crown land that we could stop and hike around in. We stepped out of the car and were met with a complete lack of human sound, that incredibly blissful silence that I have missed hearing since leaving the lake. There was nothing except the wind rustling the trees and the crunch of our feet on the gravel. I’m sure that in the summer, when cottagers are visiting their recreational properties, the woods aren’t quite so quiet, but there was no hint of it today. It’s one of my favourite sounds on earth – the absence of people.

The road we followed in ran along the south shore of Big Gull Lake, one of the biggest lakes in North Frontenac, at 21 km (13 miles) long and with a surface area of 2,540 sq km (980 sq mi). The lake has no significant inflow streams, and the majority of its water comes from springs and snowmelt. We passed a dam at the nearby town that helps to maintain the water levels. In the fall, the dam is opened to allow the water to drop, providing room to accommodate spring runoff. This usually occurs in mid-October, after the Thanksgiving weekend (usually the weekend in Ontario when most cottages are closed up). Apparently the minimum water level is usually reached in December, so it still has a little bit more to go. This afternoon, the weeds and pond lilies at the edges of the little bay were all exposed.

The portion of the road we walked along bordered a small bay. There were no cottages along this stretch, although there were a couple of powerlines that stretched across the water, and a dock on the far side, its owner not visible from where we stood. Big Gull, being a large lake, is home to many cottages; the most recent number I could locate had the estimate in the 350s. That said, the overall population of the lake is low, with many stretches containing no cottages at all. The lake has a shoreline of about 88 km (55 mi), and a large portion of that is North Frontenac Park Lands, a stewardship program and backcountry camping experience that helps to protect land around a number of the township’s lakes.

Whereas South Frontenac is predominantly deciduous forest, most of North Frontenac has a very strong coniferous component, especially along lake or marsh edges or rocky ridges. Black Spruce is a reasonably common species in this area, a tree that in South Frontenac I’d only see associated with bogs and fens. The landscape there is noticeably rockier, too, especially compared to our current location. Both features are characteristic of the Shield, and North Frontenac represents the southern edge of it. The land isn’t much use for farming, and the vast majority is forested.

Despite the warm temperatures today, we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife. A flock of geese flushed from the water of the bay, a Blue Jay flitting among the hemlocks, a White-breasted Nuthatch foraging on a dead snag. I didn’t see any insects, although I admit I wasn’t looking too closely. It would be nice to visit in the summer when the woods are in full vibrant song. As we were leaving the road, we passed a noticeboard where one rather hopeful resident had posted a request for information on any possible sightings of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the area. I wish I had got a photo. I bet he got a lot of well-intentioned reports of Pileateds.

NB: I didn’t get a chance to post these on actual Sunday, as our internet service provider seemed to be suffering an outage. So they’re going up Monday, but I’ve backdated them to Sunday.

Here are another couple of species that have been frequenting our feeders, but that I didn’t have room to mention on Friday. Clearly, the female Hairy Woodpecker (above) rules the roost.