Hairy!

So. We have in these parts two small black and white woodpeckers - the Downy Woodpecker and the Hairy Woodpecker. I can't explain the names, but that's not my point. My point is: if you look at a photo of one, and then the photo of the other, they look basically almost identical. I have always thought I couldn't tell them apart. Or, thought we only ever had Downy Woodpeckers visiting our yard, because they all looked small and black and white and... well. The males of both species, by the way, have red at the back of their heads. So today I stood looked out the window at one point and saw a woodpecker on the peanut feeder and immediately thought: "Wait a second. That bird is much bigger than a Downy. That must be a Hairy Woodpecker! I'll be darned." Of course, I took a number of photos, and they got more and more entertaining because there were eventually about six Blue Jays and two actual Downy Woodpeckers all vying with the Hairy Woodpecker for ownership of the peanut feeder. My blip today is the HAWO on the feeder with a Blue Jay flying past. The extra I'll try to add is of both a DOWO and the HAWO so you can see the considerable size difference. The other difference, for identification purposes - which comes in handy if you don't have one of each sitting next to each other - is that the Hairy Woodpecker's bill is much larger in relationship to its head than the Downy Woodpecker's bill is to its head.

I am tagging this for SillySaturday because I'm almost certain there's something silly about the level of excitement this event caused in me. Also the Blue Jay flying by looks kind of silly. And trying to make it fit for SillySaturday is - in and of itself - silly. 

Plus my having to publish the main blip and then edit it to add the extra is additionally silly... I'm currently on my third try and getting nowhere.

Fifth try. Still no joy. I'm going to go browse for a bit and get back to it later.

Seventh tries the charm!