At Thickson's Woods this morning, I added two more species to my Winter List: a White-breasted Nuthatch and a female Red-bellied Woodpecker that was moving around from tree to tree. Her conspicuous "churr" calling made it easier to locate her:
This is yet another one of those nasty species whose descriptive name is a stretch to see when the bird is flitting around high up in a tree. One of my field guides indicates that the "faint wash of red on belly is rarely visible". That would be a yes, but in fact you can see the "red-belly" here:
But normally this is how we usually see them, no "red-belly" here!
Other than that it was quiet, and not even the huge raft of Greater Scaup from the past few days were out on the lake anymore!
A beautiful female Northern Cardinal stocked up on berries:
A male Downy Woodpecker frantically searched for insects:
As for yesterday's Harlequin Duck in Whitby, it turns out that "she" is in fact a "he", a first winter male to be specific. Many thanks to the Horvath's for helping me out with this, as I was puzzled by the amount of white on its face (the left side had more white on it than the right side). They tell me that if he continues his stay here, we may have the good fortune to watch him gradually change over to his stunning adult plumage, now wouldn't that be abfab??!! Fingers are crossed.
Here's are yesterday's photos again. This view shows a white line from the white patch over his eye starting to creep up over his crown...
...but is not so obvious on this side:
This view shows the start of a white breast side vertical bar. Huh. Not so easy, is it??!!
Here's a new photo which also shows the white side vertical bar:
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