Woodpecker in my Tree

I came in here and sat down at my computer and looked out the window and the first couple of things I see are the hummingbird feeder and my beautiful Ash tree. But, guess what was jumping around in my Ash tree - our returning spring visitor, the Woodpecker. He is a healthy dude and it is good to see him.

Thank goodness, my Ash will be here next year too for the Woodpecker to visit - and Yes, Grandma from Pennsylvania - you and I are tree comrades and tree hugger buddies. (don't say that too fast!) GOOD JOB saving the Maple tree in your neighborhood. Beautiful trees!

For my dear blogger friends on the east coast and inbetween here and there, you may not think seeing a Woodpecker is a big deal. Living in the desert it is a big deal to us to have seen and fed the variety of birds that we have accommodated here at this home. We lived on a farm in Kentucky and you would have thought we would have been more in tune to birds there, but we only saw birds when we went for walks in the woods especially in the spring. And then we would see the Dogwoods and Red Buds in bloom - what a beautiful sight! We had loads of cats on our farm and that's probably why we didn't have any birds. The cats were welcome pets to keep the mice population under control in the barns. I never saw a hummingbird close up until we moved to this house back in 1993. Can you imagine that?

Last night Bob and I were sitting outside and we saw our permanent occupant hummingbirds busy doing their thing. They are so much fun and very interesting to watch. Bob said this morning early, he saw a red-head Rufus hummingbird. They are amazingly beautiful. We have four feeders, three in the front - two by my office windows, one by the kitchen bay window, and the fourth, in the back yard. Bob mentioned that he has had to keep a good supply of syrup ready because they are really "hitting" the feeders hard. It's matting season so they are hungry. It is a game for us to find the new hummingbird nests. Sometimes it is easy, but mostly, a huge challenge to find their nests. Even though we are in the desert, we have lots of trees on our property - contrary to most of the property in our area.

We also have three desert tortoises. Part of our land is cleared off - no grass, and would be classified desert landscape sort of, but we do have a pecan tree and a persimmon tree plus lots of pine trees and a couple roses bushes growing which use to be on a fence line when we kept the dogs down there - we have no dogs now. The desert tortoises are protected species here in Nevada. I don't like them - and since Bob adopted them, they are his babies. I don't think you can tell by that photo, but they are big! They have plenty of ground to roam on and Bob makes sure they have water and food. There's no grass but lots of desert weeds pop up here and there and they chew on them. They usually go into their hibernating hole - it's huge - when it begins to get cold, and will come out when it is warm enough for them to endure. Bob saw the first female yesterday and he fed her while she was out. He buys a huge bag of vegetable medley from Costco for their daily meal. The bag lasts a couple of weeks.

If it wasn't so hot here in the summer time, Bob would have baby chicks. Those type of chicks are the only competition I ever had! He never bothered with human chicks, but he sure loved those sweet little yellow baby chicks!