Saturday at The Gimp Compound

This guy just visited the suet feeder in the back yard. He's a pileated woodpecker and he's huge -- about 15". Just him today, though sometimes he comes with his mate. The suet feeder hangs on an old oak tree at the edge of the deck outside the kitchen table window, so he's less than 20 feet away.

He's kinda stupid, and utterly paranoid, and a complete delight to see. Seriously, when's the last time you saw a huge wild bird up close? It's thrilling.

The Gimp Compound is part of a neighborhood built in an old (now mostly decimated) oak grove, or a lightning hazard, really. I suppose he lives at the top of one of these trees, though it's unusual for them to take a home so close to people.

I do a lot of bird-watching from the kitchen table, especially this past year because the vent makes me somewhat less mobile while at home. Bird-watching is a very underrated activity. For winter, there's five sources of food near the window here, plus the heated bird bath. This includes one little feeder six inches from the window, the suet feeder, a peanut feeder, and an elaborate platform towering 25 feet off the ground that holds sunflower seeds. That last was a manly victory over the squirrels and is restocked with use of a pulley. There's a hand-welded squirrel guard halfway up the post courtesy of my uncle, and the last branch any squirrel successfully jumped to the feeder from was long ago sawn away. Squirrel-foiling around here is a family affair.

The purple finches sometimes decide to have a bath party and take turns splashing in the bird bath, splattering the nearby porch window and driving the cat nuts. They like to talk while they eat, but if a bird they don't know joins them they quiet down and keep their thoughts to themselves. The chickadees swoop in and look cute. The nuthatches do everything upside down, which often makes me laugh. The juncos prefer to forage under the feeders on the ground. The bluejays are stunning and bossy.

All the woodpeckers -- the downies and the hairies and the flickers -- are quirky and cautious and spend lots of time looking around sideways before getting to the suet. There's one male flicker who keeps trying to use the finch feeder but his feet are built wrong so he's very awkward at that. It irritates the finches to have him clamoring around, I think. The cardinals are loners and don't like the finch flocks, so they come when the lunch crowd is gone, though I saw two bright males battling for territory in the neighbor's trees this morning.

And the squirrels. Yesterday's entertainment was a squirrel trying to get to the peanuts hanging in a mesh cylinder under the eaves. He couldn't figure it out, but one day soon he'll be frustrated enough to try a flying leap from the tree. After he finds a successful route to the peanuts, they will be moved and we'll start the challenge again.

But Mr. Pileated! Seriously. Thrilling. Makes me want to wander around the house going "Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha!"

This is what he sounds like outside of cartoonland.