While I was watching all the other birds, a bright red bird with a crest flew into the seed tray and totally captured my attention. It had black around the eyes and beak, which was bright orange. It was the brightest and most colorful bird at the feeder. I happened to look down to the snow below the seed tray and saw a rusty brown version of the bright red bird feeding on seeds that had fallen out of the feeder. I could tell they were related because this one had the same bright orange beak. When I looked at page 20 in Eastern Birds by James Coe, I discovered that it was a female NORTHERN CARDINAL, and the bright red one was the male.

Four big blue birds with peaked heads flew into the biggest feeder, which is a roofed seed tray full of black oil sunflower seeds. Their color is mostly blue, but there’s black around the beak and eyes and on the sides of the head, plus a black band like a necklace around the front part of the neck. They have white on the wings and the underside of the tail, and gray on their sides and front. Page 20 of Eastern Birds by James Coe shows that it’s a BLUE JAY. When I flipped to page 104 to read about Blue Jays, I learned that the peak on top of the head is called a CREST.

While I was watching the male Downy Woodpecker, a bigger version of what looked like the exact same bird landed on the suet feeder and drove the smaller bird away. I looked at the bigger bird really carefully and couldn’t see anything to distinguish it from the smaller bird except that it was bigger and its beak was longer. When I checked page 20 of Eastern Birds by James Coe, I thought I was out of luck because the only woodpecker he showed was the male Downy. But then I decided to check the page listed for the Downy (page 96), and there were both sexes of the two look-alike woodpeckers — plus a few other woodpeckers that I didn’t see. My bigger woodpecker was a HAIRY WOODPECKER, and it does indeed look just like a Downy Woodpecker, only it’s 9 1/2 inches long as opposed to 6 1/2 inches.

There’s a lot of activity at the Birds of Vermont Museum feeders, but I decided to focus on just one species at a time. The second bird I noticed was bigger than the chickadee and behaved in a different way. It was a black and white bird that hung onto the suet feeder from the side and pecked away at it with a beak that was bigger than the chickadee’s. It had a big white patch in the middle of its black and white back, black on top of the head, a black line through the eye, white above and below the eye, and white on the chest and belly. It was kind of jerky when it moved. While I was watching this bird, one that looked just like it flew in, and I noticed that it had red on the back of its head. When I consulted page 20 of Eastern Birds by James Coe, I spotted the one with the red on its head: a male DOWNY WOODPECKER. So my second species includes both a male and female Downy Woodpecker.

I decided to start my Beginning Bird Watcher’s Blog at the Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington, Vermont, where they have a big viewing window that lets me sit indoors and watch the birds that come to their feeders. (Incidentally, they have a Web cam, so you too can watch the birds at their feeders by going to their Web site and clicking on Bird Feeder Camera. CLICK HERE if you want to take a look at what’s going on right this minute. The camera updates the view every four seconds.)

My first bird is a small black, gray, tan, and white bird. The top part of the head and throat are black with white cheeks in between, the back is gray, the wings are gray and white, the sides are tan, and the front is white. This small bird is very active and energetic. It flies in, grabs a seed, and flies back out. Several seem to keep coming and going right behind each other, but it all happens so fast I can’t count how many there are.

I opened my new bird book — Eastern Birds by James Coe — and began leafing through the pages to see if I could find a picture of my bird. On page 20 I found a very useful feature: two facing pages of Common Backyard Birds, the one on the left for winter feeder birds and the one on the right for spring and summer birds. Toward the top of the left hand page I spotted my bird: BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE!