Friday Framed Finish

Next up in my series of framed finishes is Birds of a Feather's "Busy as a Bee".

I chose a frame that picked up the burgundy in the words and the bee's head.  I went all out and I had three stitches in this series framed.  At some point I'll show all three side by side.

Earlier this week (Tuesday morning to be precise) I had a zillion Ceder Waxwings. okay maybe not a zillion, but lots of birds anyway.

This Big Leaf Maple was standing room only.

I counted over 70 birds in this photo.

Look how tightly packed in they are.

The air was filled with their buzzing as they talked among themselves.

  

I learned something interesting about Ceder Waxwings. They can see in the ultraviolet light spectrum.  This allows them to tell at a glance whether or not fruit such as that on a crab apple is ripe or not.  The birds thus never eat unripened or green fruit.  Isn't that the cleverest thing? 

At the same time I had quite a bit of woodpecker action going on.  Besides my 'normal' Acorn Woopecker activity...   

...I was pleased to see a couple of small Downy Woodpeckers.

This is a female I think which is ultra exciting as it is the first one I've seen this year. 

And there was a male Downy as well.

Back to the female once again.

The dead tops of our Big Leaf Maples are unsightly, but boy are they ever bird magnets! 

To top it off I also had a couple of larger Hairy Woodpeckers.

I see a bit of red at the back of the head, so it's a male.

I've heard Hairy Woodpeckers and seen them flying overhead, but this is the first time in months that one has stopped by. 

Thank goodness we have lots of Big Leaf Maple and other snags so the Sapsucker had a perch of his own.

I talked about the sap 'wells' the Sapsuckers drill on love trees.  Here's some recent work on one of our Sweetgums.

And then my birding frenzy ended when these two hawks flew in.