A Little Patience + Luck = Success!

I saw many familiar birds that I have come to recognize and love at the February 2022 Annual Great Backyard Count from just my home. Among my favorite winter visitors include the White-throated Sparrows, White Crowned Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos and more. For the past few winters I have spotted a male Harris Sparrow, and I have yet to spot its mate. My yard gets tons of American Goldfinches who crowd my many bird feeders.
 It's fun and telling to watch how different species have their own feeding habits. The Dark-eyed Juncos prefer to eat seeds on the ground, the Tufted Titmouses love swooping in, grabbing a seed, then flitting to a tree to peck their seed open like the Black-capped Chickadee. I had a Downy Woodpecker who absolutely loved the suet cakes that I hung in my cage feeders. My resident Blue Jays like to call out loudly, their entrance just as loud to snatch up some bird food themselves. Male Cardinals with their vibrant red stand out beautifully as their mates also take turns at the feeders.
The lesser enjoyed European Starlings do make an appearance, but I saw very few this year, and they are very flighty birds. Then there are the resident House Sparrows that try to dominate the feeders, but the other native birds do put up a good fight. But then there was one bird I had never seen before.
I noticed it from my back door on our neighbor's walnut tree climbing on the bark. I noticed its size but it was not a Red-Bellied Woodpecker that I had also spotted, yet it had the behaviors of a woodpecker. I noticed the white and black marking on the lower feathers. I was immediately excited, exclaiming to my husband Steven that this was an unidentified bird that I had to identify! I grabbed my bird books and my bird apps, frantically searching while looking at the bird's behavior through the binoculars. He was pecking at the bark, looking for hidden insects. It was then that I figured it out, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a lifer bird! I was so ecstatic, but I needed proof.
I don’t have a great camera, just my phone and a pair of binoculars. But I knew a little trick that I taught myself, that if I have Steven hold the binoculars right where I spotted the bird, I could then angle the phone camera just right to get the shot. This was going to take a steady hand, patience, and luck but I knew we could do it because we had done it before with a scope. So I would sight the sapsucker, then have Steven hold the binoculars without moving them, then I sighted the camera at an angle. Now the bird did keep moving, but I was determined, and our patience paid off! That’s what I think bird watching is about, patience, as that is the best reward of all!
                                                                                                ~~Andrea Goldstrom