giant nature

Tuesday, I happened to stop by a bird watching store with Diego while we were waiting for a story time to begin at the bookstore next door. Diego's always loved his "pas", as he calls them, so I thought I'd see what was in there. We've been trying to attract more birds to our yard, with little success.

We put up a new bird feeder a little over a month ago, and they barely touch it.

I found out why.

It turns out that the traditional mix we've all been using for years, from Lowe's or Walmart, is mostly just "filler" and the birds don't eat it. The nice lady behind the counter showed me some much better options (which were even cheaper than that bag of junk I spilled all over the driveway!) so we bought one. I put it in our feeder that night, and had low expectations, knowing it sometimes takes birds awhile to find it.

Well, we woke up to find this! The largest pileated woodpecker I've ever seen! (Isabela looked it up in our bird watcher's guide which we now place right by the window, along with our binoculars, for times just like this.)


It was playing hide and seek with a squirrel. And while I know he wasn't looking for the seeds in our feeder, it was quite a coincidence.


My camera was on some weird setting, so I didn't get great pictures, but I was just excited to capture it at all!


We also saw a cardinal couple, a baby woodpecker, and some other birds we didn't know. SO, if you're having trouble feeding your birds...try a new food...the one we're using is black oil sunflower seeds. It also felt great to buy from a specialty store and not one of those big chains. I don't know why I don't do that more often!