Flippin' Flickers

The flickers are drilling holes in my house.  Exhibit A.

The large orange blobs are, I believe, expanding foam from where the previous owner was filling flicker holes.  I keep finding more and more of these holes around the house.  I'm monitoring at least four now, and that's not counting the ones in the front porch, that aren't really integral to the house.

What's a flicker, you ask?  These guys:

Bane of my existence.  (Image from Wikipedia, where you can read more about these menaces.)  These guys sound like jackhammers.  And like any good jackhammer operator, they take great pleasure in their skill at waking me up on Saturday mornings when I'm trying to sleep in.  And I thought I moved up here to get away from the city noise!

Well, today, I learned that it's not only the flickers.  No, now I've also got these teeny tiny chickadee-looking peckers.  Instead of jackhammers, they prefer a more subtlely artistic chiseling.  They look approximately like this:

And just when I'm prepared to run out and purchase a BB gun, I spot the following on the interwebz:

Woodpeckers are migratory birds and are protected by the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty.  A federal permit is required before any lethal or harmful control methods can be employed against the Woodpecker


Awwwww... DANGIT.  The same website says they'll be gone by July 1.  Will that be before or after my pretty new house looks like swiss cheese?


A happier thought: Steph came to visit last week (yay!), and brought tulips.

Spring may bring woodpeckers, but it also brings tulips.  Ah, the yin and the yang.

WILDLIFE SIGHTINGS:

Friday 9 April: We hosted the turkey farm on our driveway.  Two toms and eight hens.

And this guy, keeping watch up on the hill makes 11:

Monday 12 April: Elk!  Eight in total, including 3 males with very nice racks, indeed.  (It's okay for a chick to comment on a dude's rack, but not the other way around.  So say I.)  I didn't get pics due to low evening light and being on the phone with mom at the time.  I hope they come back soon.  Word is, they like to come down here for the bugling (mating) season in the fall, and even one of the hiking trails nearby gets closed while the elk come shake their groove thangs.  I mean... they ain't nothin' but mammals.  I mean... *sigh*.

On that note...

Meet the Turkeys

I had heard them before, but today I met them - the Turkey family:

A big, beautiful tom and his lovely hen.

The driveway had melted off enough yesterday in the warm, sunny weather, that I was able to drive the Jeep to the top overnight (for the first time since Tuesday morning - yay!).  So I pulled out this morning to go to work, I swung around the switchback onto the lower part of the driveway, and there they were, standing in the middle of the drive, in the snow.  The tom wasn't happy to see me at all.  He puffed out all of his magnificent plumage, gobbled, and walked straight toward me as if he was going to take on the Jeep.

Sorry, dude, but you would lose that fight.  And you look too much like thanksgiving dinner for me to feel bad about it.

As I rolled the Jeep slowly toward him, he and his mate hopped with purpose off the side of the hill and out of sight.

Wild Turkey?

I came out of the house to go to work pretty early - about 6:30am. I heard the gobbling of turkeys, lower on the hill behind the shed. I didn't see them, but it would seem we have wild turkeys.