A Flash of Red,,,,,,

Of all the birds in the yard the ones with red are my favorites.
Whether it is the Rose-breasted Grosbeak.....

With that beautiful red V on his chest..

Or the bright red head of the Red-bellied Woodpecker
I am always looking for the 'flash of red'
But on this day when I was playing around with the
settings on my new camera.. I was trying to see if
I liked the red bright, vibrant, or just natural.....

I moved to another window to get a better shot of the Red
belly and saw a flash of red on a faraway tree....

I was just amazed and just started clicking away giving my
settings no thought at all...

I had not seen a Pileated Woodpecker in my yard but once
in 20 years.

He flew from the tree right into the yard and started to
hop around on the fresh cut stumps

I tried to tone down the vibrant red from the wrong camera
setting by reducing the saturation in picasa...but

That big beautiful head was about as bright red as it could get

No matter that the red was really red and green was
well..... really green, I was thrilled to get these pictures
of a coveted bird in my yard.

He hopped from stump to stump

not aware of me at the window....

Only in the Spring can you see these amazing things
right in your own back yard...

To God be the Glory ~~ Great Things He Hath Done

Finding the Baby Wrens....

So devotedly birds tend to their young in the nest, and so

intuitively they gently nudge them to flight.

When I arrived home on Monday I knew it was way too quiet.
Before I looked I was sure the baby wrens were gone.
They were.
So I decided to find them. I went out on the porch and
listened and sure enough I could hear the parents calling
and singing . I followed the bird song and it took me behind
my tool shed and into the thicket.

It is overgrown and lush green back there with lots of bushes
and wild purple phlox growing.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of purple against the green.

It didn't take long to find mom and dad.. it looked like they
were discussing what to do next.

A short distance away in the middle of a mess of tangled
sticks and limbs were two of the babies.

The one of the right was doing ok, but the the other was having
a really hard time getting upright and turning around

Notice how hard he is holding onto the limb. It must be
scary to come from the nest to a high open limb.

He finally gets turned around and you can clearly see the
white eye stripe on both babies.

If you click you will be able to see the fuzzy white down on
top of the baby's head on the left

Mom came flying in to check me out and protect her precious
cargo hanging on in the bushes.

Then I spotted another one .. he looked like he was napping

Opening his eyes he turns toward me.

Don't you just wish you knew what they were thinking?

Then he gives me the straight on 'mad wren' look.

Another one was in the direction of the sun streaming in...
My settings were all wrong, but I got a couple bad shots.
Look how short and stubby the tails are. Not the typical
adult straight up in the air perky tail your used to.

Before I left I told them to come for meal worms ......

As soon as I got back to the house I heard the male calling
at the window...I scooped up some meal worms
stuck my hand out of the window
and there he was ..

I'm hoping the babies will come too... We will see.

To God be the Glory ~~ Great Things He Hath Done

Wren Update...

The first Baby Picture

Tiny but looking for food. Taken on April 27th

The next photograph is taken on May 2nd. .. 6 days later
Wow how they grow

This photo is taken on Mothers Day May 9th...
That's 13 days later and they are now looking like
Wrens and about ready to fledge .. 14 days they say.

My goal was to hand feed these cute noisy little birds...
Having hope but not much expectation I proceeded to
feed them meal worms on the stump next to the tank.

I watched as the 'poop' came out and

the food went in.

Mr. with his broken beak liked to sit on this 12 foot
snag in my yard and sing to his hearts content.

One day as I watched it had been raining and he was looking
a little unkempt...and just sat there hunkered down.... then

He laid his cute little head down. He was probably exhausted
from all that feeding of 5 babies.

They were already used to me giving them meal worms...
but wouldn't come to my hand when I sat out there
so I had to think of a way to get them close to me...
I took a small decorative ladder and positioned
it out of the window and put a upside down flower pot
on it and there little white bowl with worms.

They immediately took the bait... no pun intended and so I went
to the next step and extended my arm out with worms in
my cupped hand.

I put my camera on the tripod and set it for movie
and waited... about 30 seconds later they came...
Check out the video below.(next post down) I was so happy and
can't wait to see if I can feed the babies when they
fledge in the same manner.

To God be the Glory ~~ Great Things He Hath Done

Finally.... hand feeding the Wrens

Mamas are sooo great.....

To God be the Glory ~~ Great Things He Hath Done