The yard is crowded with birds, mainly house sparrows, as well as the juvenile birds from this summer's class. This bird-like shape is a youthful male Downy Woodpecker with his carefully planned manner of approaching the hanging suet feeder. First, he flies up and lands with a loud scratchy noise on the screen, he hops all over the screen for a minute or so, then stops about eye-level to me as I sit at my desk. He peers in; he turns his not-quite-fledged head to look in with one eye. He repeats on the other side. He looks like an un-made bed, with plummage "on side-ways". Perhaps he is thinking "my Woodpecker Hand-Book said I would find food in the bark of trees: what's this??" He hops around somemore--oh, while keeping a sharp eye out for Uncle MarshHawk!---finally he leaps over, grabs a big beakful of suet n'seeds and flies away. This may be a calorie neutral exercise; it's extremely cute. He does it several times a day.
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