Pileated Woodpeckers!

A very exciting late Saturday afternoon! We were sitting upstairs (Dave, Britt and I) and Dave first noticed the pileated at the dead tree on our front lawn! This is a first sighting for us in our area (we have seen them up north). The male was working away at the tree and doing some serious damage (which is fine, since it's dead and we're leaving it up for the woodpeckers anyway). After a few minutes, a female pw flew in too and joined the male on the same tree. The female didn't stay around too long and went off to a downed tree in some thicker coverage to the side of our lot. The male followed her shortly afterwards, but we could still see them for quite some time. This is probably our best and most exciting sighting in a long time! Since pws don't migrate, we wonder if they've be around all this time and we just haven't seen them . We have noticed holes in dead trees, but it's hard to know for sure who caused these (flickers, hairy or downey etc).



On Sunday, we went for a nice long hike in Mississauga at the Rattay Marsh Conservation Area. There we saw 4-6 yellow-rumped warblers in a tree. This is another first confirmed sighting for us (Dave has seen them before on his own, but I had never seen one before this). Warblers take a little more work to identify since they flit around the tops of trees and move very quickly. By the time I would see one and then raise my binoculars to take another look, they would have moved. We've circled it in the shot below:




Here are more pics from our outing:












Overall, another great weekend with some exciting finds!