Yard Bird of the Day

Every year about this time we start standing out on the deck at dusk, listening for "peents", the call of the male American Woodcock. And every year we hear them. This year is no different, at least to birds, and sure enough the peenting has commenced.

But not last evening. Perhaps it was too cold (it was for us!).

Although  they still need to eat.

And food equals worms. And to find them, they need a bare patch of ground.

They stick that long bill all the way down into the mud.

And it just so happens that just outside our living room windows is such a bare patch.

For reasons that must have made sense at the time, the outlet pipe for the sump pump in our crawl space is outside our living room. And the bare patch traces the path of the pipe, which discharges into our rain garden.

The corner of the house that it comes out of, is diagonally opposite of where the pump is. This is literally (original sense of the word) the farthest point from the pump.

And we are happy they choose the point as we now have Timberdoodle as a living room bird.

It actually came to close to photograph.

Crazy.