Trails of Hats'n Hospitalitea

So yesterday I’m standing in the kitchen and our little Christmas day friend shows up again.  There was quit a disturbance out there as Grandpa and Ana had just put out handfuls of peanuts for the Blue Jays.  On Christmas day a bird came to the feeder that I had never seen.  I’m not a bird turd so I didn’t have an idea of its type but knew I hadn’t seen one here before.  It rather looked like a wood pecker or in this family.  So I ran and got a bird book and started looking up what I thought it might be and to my surprise I found out it was a Common Flicker.  So we looked up Common Flickers on the internet to find out that these birds are not a common bird to our back yards here in PEI in fact you might have a sighting of 1 to 5 all winter on the Island.  Oh! you don’t say, hum I have one that likes my backyard and my bird feeder which I read that it isn’t common they will take up with your feeder.  Ok, this guy is different, maybe even special.  I also went to have a look at what food they are eating and I found Flickers also eat berries and seeds, especially in winter, including poison oak and ivy, dogwood, sumac, wild cherry and grape, bayberries, hackberries, and elderberries, and sunflower and thistle seeds. So instead of heading out to the place I know I can get poision ivy from it would be a lot safer to get this big guy some sunflower seeds or thistle seeds.  

I noticed how he comes and goes a lot so I went to the tea room window to see if I could find where he went, (oh no I”m becoming a bird turd) and to my surprise he has come by for a Christmas drink of water out of our pond.  Now the pond is frozen over but we have a heater in it to warm the water of our fish.  Yes, we are fish turds and found out last year when we lost a great deal of fish that it could be from the gasses not escaping.  So we have a pond heater that just makes a ring and keeps the water open in one spot and you can see it in the photo.  Sorry it didn’t turn out well as I thought I could use the zoom without the tripod and well I know I can’t.  

Now that we have Christmas behind us the days are getting longer and the ground here is preparing for Spring.  We have had two snow falls that are not amounting to very much but enough to make a couple of snowmen.  We have guests in the bed and breakfast who don’t often see snow and so they are having a grand time of it. 

Thanks for stopping by, take care and think of those New Year’s resolutions that we all make.

~ cindy