Breakfast Anyone?

I've been lining the deck railing with mealworms every morning for months now. And each day I have to chuckle a little at the girl who wouldn't touch a worm--the one was content to go fishing with her dad in a boat as long as he did all the "dirty work." I keep them in the fridge, so they don't move around a whole lot. One morning, though, I set the container out on the counter and was interrupted by the phone. When I took them outside a few minutes later, they were very wiggly and determined to cling to my thumb rather than drop onto the railing. A girl can only take so much, so back into the fridge they went for half an hour to chill out.

Over the winter, it was the Carolina wrens that waited for me to put out the worms. Now, though, several different birds are waiting for them (including the blue jays which are a bit piggy about it if you ask me). Above is a photo of my favorite woodpecker, the red-bellied male I posted about yesterday. I enjoy watching him eat the worms as he positions them "long-ways" in his beak and swallows them whole. But lately, he's only been eating one or two, then cramming as many as he can into his long beak. How many do you see?