Inside looking out

Margaret Madsen photo

I know I have a lot of nerve calling this blog Prairie Birds when I am simply an old duck who likes watching birds, not an ornithologist nor any kind of authority. This time of year all my bird watching is from inside the house looking out or from inside the car driving somewhere. Today's photo, for example, was taken through the kitchen window on a snowy cold day - a feathered fugitive seeking shelter on the feeding tray of a cedar "barn" we brought back as a souvenir of a trip to Kentucky. I spend hours at my kitchen table with my morning coffee or afternoon tea just watching what's happening outside my window.

Earlier I watched a Sharp-shinned Hawk perched in the leafless birch eating a victim from the adjacent feeders (hopefully said dinner was a pesky House Sparrow). The hawk appeared to strip the meat from the bones, carefully leaving intact the ligaments that connected the skeleton together. I watched through binoculars as it methodically munched its way up and down and around the skeleton till there was nothing left but bones still hanging together. It probably sounds like a rather unpleasant thing to watch, but trust me, it was no worse than watching a person attack a KFC drumstick or a slab of barbecued ribs.

Another avian diner I found fascinating was a Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) I first noticed on the lawn looking for ants last summer. He moved over to the sidewalk where he must have discovered a bonanza because he jack-hammered his way along with precise determination. Flickers don't look like ground feeders - aren't they woodpeckers, for heaven's sake? And another piece of flicker trivia I discovered when I picked up a feather - the shaft (quill) is actually yellow. Until I saw that feather, I didn't realize the name was literal - I simply thought yellow shafted have yellow armpits and red shafted show red when they fly.