Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: birdwatching

Yet another day of Flickr not working properly. Will be so glad when they fix the map issue, for a start! Uploading this morning was fast. As you can tell, I have finally managed to get back to sorting and editing a few more (15 + 11) photos taken on our 13-day birding trip to South Texas, 19-31 March 2019. Apart from yesterday, the last photos from this holiday were posted om 20 May, three weeks ago. These photos look so drab in comparison to the colourful local birds I have been posting recently. Actually, I think Day 8 and Day 9 are going to be similar, but then Day 10 will have more colourful Texas birds. Despite the lack of close, colourful birds, Day 8 was an interesting day, spent at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas. The forest was so different from anything I had ever seen, with Spanish Moss hanging from all the branches. It was quite a strange feeling to walk the trails, "Established in 1943 for the protection of migratory birds, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge happens to be positioned along an east-west and north-south juncture of two major migratory routes for many species of birds. It is also at the northern-most point for many species whose range extends south into Central and South America. The refuge is right in the middle of all this biological diversity, which is what makes this 2,088 acre parcel the ‘jewel of the National Wildlife Refuge System.’ Though small in size, Santa Ana offers visitors an opportunity to see birds, butterflies and many other species not found anywhere else in the United States beyond deep South Texas." From link below. www.fws.gov/refuge/Santa_Ana/map.html

This is a male because it has a red chin and throat. These woodpeckers drill a series of small, square wells in a tree trunk, making quite a perfect pattern of lined-up "holes". Then they lap up the sap (and insects) from these square wells with their fringed tongue.