Follow our adventures living in the woods and meeting wild ones. This year we’re alternating between poisonous plants and continuing to write about pollinators and their host plants.
Dear Wood Folk, Once in a while I see a meme about telling sparrows apart that has drawings of their heads with their different color patterns – super helpful really. There’s a flycatcher version. Except in the flycatchers case they just copy/pasted the same drab head for each one. It’s a joke, but it’s kind … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, The song sparrow (melospiza melodia) is the sparrow I most often spot and especially hear around Haliburton. But I’ve seen 8 species of sparrows, listed here in order of my own frequency: our feature song sparrow, white-throated (zonotrichia albicollis), chipping (spizella passerina), dark-eyed junco (junco hyemalis), fox sparrow (passerella iliaca), American tree … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, There are many species of hummingbirds in the world, but here in Haliburton county there’s just one: the ruby-throated hummingbird. Only the males have the “ruby throat”, which in low light appears black or rusty. All sorts of folks put out hummingbird feeders here come end of May and bring them back … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, If I wasn’t including a local woodpecker checklist (hence “and friends”) I would have titled this Architect of the Birds, or maybe Landlord if landlords weren’t so often loathed. Pileateds are kind of the bird version of beavers. The rectangular holes of various sizes that pileated woodpeckers make are utilized for food … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, Last year most of my May mornings started with a whistling “pleased, pleased, pleased to MEECHYA” from a chestnut-sided warbler I uncreatively called Chessy. Finding a mate seemed to take a while, but eventually he found a partner and had one fledgling. Well, it probably only appeared to take a while because these … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, The name “waxwing” comes from a waxy red secretion found on the tips of the secondary feathers of some cedar waxwings. In the 1960s, orange became all the rage, which was a great mystery at first. It turns out the color change came from waxwings eating the berries of a non-native species … [Read more…]