The male has arrived

I know everyone is going to be just thrilled beyond belief to hear today's good news: the male downy has finally visited the feeder!  Isn't that wonderful?

(Okay, so probably I am the only one who cares about this, but lucky for me I control the content here.  Hooray!)

We've had a female downy woodpecker visiting our suet feeder for the last couple of  weeks.  Actually, I first saw her there the day after I bought a new type of food for the feeder.  So then I was all "Oh, that was a good idea buying that Cherry Treat, look, we've already attracted a new species with it!"  But then I realized I hadn't actually put the Cherry Treat in the feeder yet, and it was still the same old Peanut Treat that the downy had come for, so nevermind. 

She is about twice as big as all the other birds who use the feeder, so it's pretty easy to tell when she's around.  The feeder is on the back porch, and I usually leave the kitchen window open so when the downy arrives, with her huge chirps, I can hear her, even in the bedroom. 

She is pretty skittish though, so I haven't gone out onto the porch and watched her from there.  The chickadees, nuthatches and bushtits are so tame that I can get within a couple of feet of them and they hardly seem to notice.  But the female downy won't even let me open the kitchen door before she flits off. 

Anyway, I've been wondering when her partner was going to show up, and hoping it was soon since males are prettier to look at than females.  Then this morning I spotted him high up in a tree in the yard, and thought today might be the day.   And it was! 

He is even more skittish than the female, though, and flew off when I closed the cutlery drawer too loudly in the kitchen, so no photo ops yet.  But if you're interested, check out this video on Alan's Birdcam Blog of a female downy feeding a juvenile.  Aside from the feeding part, this video exactly recreates what's going on at my porch feeder.