Pileated pursuits

It was about 32 degrees when I got up this morning, and the temps are dropping all through the day, down to 11 or so tonight. A high of 20 tomorrow.

The birds were all over the bird feeder, so I guess they got the word and are stocking up.

Best of all, we had a pileated woodpecker show up and hang around for a while. I first saw it when it inspected the little tree near the feeder, but that didn't prove to be of any interest. It eventually flew over to the feeder and pecked on one of the suet boxes for a while.

I will say this for the pileated woodpecker: It is so big that the squirrels hightailed it out of sight when it showed up.

We have a nesting pair of pileateds somewhere on the property and often hear them pecking away. We see them occasionally -- the best time some years back when I witnessed two of them doing a courtship dance around a tree in the backyard while a third looked on from another tree.