Yard List

My copy of Louisiana Bird Watching says "People who have never had a good close look at a pileated woodpecker invariably utter an exclamation when they finally see one". Well that's exactly what happened this afternoon when I saw one in my backyard. Yowsers! These things are huge and flashy. It pecked on my sycamore tree and it sounded like an axe. When it took off (because my dog, Eleanor, saw it and started freaking out) it beat it's wings like four times to get across the yard (big slow wingbeats).

In my Louisiana Bird Watching book, I mark the date of a spotting at the top of each page. I've been tallying up my yard list. Remember that I'm new at this and I see a lot of birds I can't positively identify. But I'm a 100% sure about these.

My Yard List:

Canada Goose 1/21/07 (about three in the back pasture on a wet winter day)
Killdeer 3/8/07 (I see them all the time hopping around my yard, so I never bothered put a date on it until today)
Red-Bellied Woodpecker 2/10/07 (woodpeckers are my new faves)
Pileated Woodpecker 3/8/07
Eastern Bluebird 2/10/07 (pretty neat)
American Robin 1/21/07 (the date when I first identified them. Man they are fat around my house)
Northern Cardinal 1/21/07 (you can tell I had my binoculars on this day)

That's all I had notations on. Of course I've seen some more that I haven't notated, so I'll need to play catch-up on these common birds, maybe this weekend. These are all birds I know I've seen in my yard, but I never bothered to notate.

Blue Jay
American Crow
Red Tailed Hawk
Cattle Egret
House Sparrow
Common Grackle
Mourning Dove
Northern Mockingbird
Ruby-throated Hummingbird (lots of them at our feeders)
Turkey Vulture
Red-winged Blackbird

There was an owl that I wasn't able to identify and a lot of LBJ's (little brown jobs) that I can't identify. If they aren't house sparrows then I'm lost.

I also think I saw a double-breated cormorant, but I couldn't positively identify it because I didn't have my binoculars.