Woodpeckers There

Design - "Summer Alphabet Sampler"

Designer - Chessie and Me

Fabric - 35 count WDW Parchment linen

Fibers - WDW - 2 strands over 2 threads

Started - 17 September 2009

Completed - 25 September 2009

Here's a blast from the past.  I love this stitch and have it framed and on display in summer months.

I am very pleased with the finished sampler.  The colors are great and the over-all mood of the piece is lovely. 

I did change a couple of things: 

The color of the heart to a pink used in the flowers.

Also the base of the skep from satin stitch to cross stitch using two threads for added weight.

And now, finally, I'm ready to show off some of the wonderful woodpeckers and other "Life Birds" that I saw a couple of weeks ago in the forests around Sisters, Oregon. We had a group of twelve led by Steve Shunk who runs Paradise Birding. 

It wasn't all birds!  We saw a Mule deer - a buck - and several of these Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels. 

The first site we visited was a condominium complex!  

There were several holes in these two aspen with active nests tended by multiple species including Tree Swallows, Western Bluebirds, Pygmy Nuthatchs, House Wrens, and Woodpeckers. I watched the activity and saw the House Wren, Bluebirds, and Swallows hard at work. The Nuthatches and Woodpeckers were so quick in and out that I did not feel I saw them clearly.

We saw and heard several different Flycatchers including this one.

At the aptly named Calliope Crossing, we saw this male Calliope Hummingbird.

In early May 2015, I had one stop by my feeder for a couple of days while on migration.  Take a look - the photos do a better job showing off this lovely bird. 

Here's one of the Life Birds I collected - a Red-naped Sapsucker.

This pair of Sapsuckers was interesting as one...

...was a leucistic bird. It had a red head, but the rest of the bird had very little pigment, and was cream colored.  Nonetheless it had found a mate and had an active nest.

This is another lifer for me - a Hammond's Flycatcher. 

This is the most unusual of the woodpeckers I think.

It's a female White-headed Woodpecker.

It's a rather odd looking bird I think, but a regular feeder bird in this area. It too was a Lifer.

Through the late 1880's the Williamson Sapsucker females and males were thought to be separate species as they look so different. This is the female and a Lifer.

And this is the male! They look nothing alike.

Sometimes Nature is very tidy!  The male is cleaning out the nest - the poop of the young birds is contained in a fecal sac for easy removal.

Here's the female once again.

We also saw Hairy Woodpeckers and several small Downy Woodpeckers like this one.

High atop a pine I was thrilled to see this Lifer - a Red-Crossbill.  If you enlarge the photo you can clearly see how the top bill overlaps the bottom - the better to open seeds.

Most Oregon woodpeckers prefer to reside in living forests, but two species, the Three-Toed, and the Black-backed Woodpecker reside in burned forest eating the beetles that inhabit the dead trees.

This is an active Black-backed Woodpecker.

And here's the male bird!

A quietly handsome bird with a dash of yellow atop its head.

We had a wonderful day exploring the birds and forests around Sisters, Oregon.