The night of the woodpeckers

As usual "work" did not disappoint. I just LOVE what I do. I needed to train in a new volunteer so, it took a bit longer then usual. We began in the flight room.

I was feeding the area that has some of the larger birds and it was filled with woodpeckers. Very very neat. It was fun being surrounded by such beautiful animals. I noticed one that was grey and did not recognized this one. It turns out I missed "juvenile" on its care sheet. It is a juvenile red bellied woodpecker. I have never seen one of these! so neat.

juvenile red bellied woodpecker

Red bellied woodpecker as an adult

There was about 4 downy woodpeckers.

There were a couple of hairy woodpeckers

Also, there was a juvenile ring neck pheasant

and a juvenile wild turkey...notice that the baby wild turkey is smaller than a baby ring necked pheasant??

Ward D!

The pileated woodpecker incident! Well the pileated got out on me last night. I got a scratch on my hand from its claw. Not to ominous, if I blogs the spec of a scratch this morning, you'd say "where is it?" That was a bit nerve racking. I felt bad for it. But after I cleaned out it's cage, I went to work on capturing it. Just how do you go about capturing a large bird with a very large beak! Well it was under the cage and I got it with a net. Lifted it up and in it went. Phew! They are SO incredibly impressive I can not tell you. I feel privileged helping it out.
Then there was this dude! The ever shrieking blue jay. I have one word for him....SSSHHHHHHHH! He was very obnoxious. I know that is the blue jays personality, and he did not disappoint.

On the way out I was called in to feed a baby red squirrel with it's eyes still closed. There were 3 of them total. Oh my! The cutest! Who'd guess these precious creatures are the loud annoying animals that love to wake up all the campers in the forest with their annoying calls. Too cute!

If anyone out there knows how I can get paid for this job.... I'm in!! It makes me so happy. Not even when I drop a woodpecker board filled with grubs and covered with dog food on the floor and have to stuff those things back in, do I get upset. I just start over and do my best. Sigh!! I will keep looking! K~