Can you tell I am on vacation this week? It would be great if life was made up of bike rides and zooming in on the birds at the feeder.

We now have both a male and female downy woodpecker visiting the suet feeders and I was able to get a couple of better pictures of the male.

Also noticed at the feeders today, pine siskins, which I had to look up in the books. They look like boring finches until they fly, and then you see the patch of yellow on their backs, between their wings. They also don’t go for the thistle seed like the goldfinches, and prefer the suet. Only, they seem to have trouble landing on the cages, so they flutter like overgrown, clumsy hummingbirds and pick off pieces of the suet.

And later I was startled by a brief flash of color. When I looked out, I thought I just saw a crow, until the sun hit it just right and I recognized a male common grackle, with its iridescent blues, purples, and bronzes, and its stark yellow eye. This was as close as it got.

Now I’m not really much of a birder. So someone correct me if I have ID’ed these birds incorrectly.