Wild Bird Wednesday - Birding in Idyllwild

Just returned from a wonderful Spring Break week in Idyllwild, CA.  For those not familiar with the area, it's a small community in the local mountains about 1.5 hours away from my home.  Quiet, peaceful, away from suburbia and full of birds.  The house we rented came complete with a bird feeder on the back deck facing the forest.  I filled it up with black oil sunflower seeds and a block of suet and spent the rest of the week watching all the birds come and go and interact with each other.  It was fascinating.

I'll be sharing more pics over the next few weeks, but here are the first few:

The Steller's Jays were the first to arrive.  They are big and noisy, but so much fun to watch.  We had some extra treats for them...peanuts in the shell.  They would swoop in, take one and fly off to a nearby branch or rock to crack the shell.

Although slightly smaller than the Jays, the Acorn Woodpeckers were clearly the dominant bird in the area.  The other birds would always move out of the way for them and while they mostly got along, there turned out to be one species that the Woodpeckers would actively attack...I'll share more about that in a future post.

Have to love that flaming red head in the sun!

Small, shy and oh-so-fast, the Oak Titmouse was a lifer for me (we don't see them much near the coast) and became one of my favorites to watch.  Unlike the other birds who would stay on the feeder for a while, this bird would zoom in, grab one seed, and zoom off again.  It was responsible for most of my deleted photos - shots of an empty railing or feeder where there WAS a bird when I pressed the shutter button.

KJ