This bird (or one of the same species) has visited our backyard throughout the half year that we have been here. I spotted it briefly over the summer, but his visits are becoming more frequent in the winter months. Even to my novice eyes, he is clearly a woodpecker (I mistook him for a visitor when he pecked away at our backdoor a couple weeks ago) and the only woodpecker I know is the Downy Woodpecker. His flash of red is so much more startling, though, than the pictures I have seen of Downy Woodpeckers. Sure enough, a little research turned up the Red-Bellied Woodpecker. Pictured above is a male; females have less red on their heads.
These woodpeckers are year round here in our part of the world. They often nest in dead trees or on dead branches attached to live trees. Evidently their nests are often taken over by starlings. I still do not feel confident that I could identify the call of this bird, but I will be listening more intently over the spring and summer as their calls are supposed to be easy to distinguish.
5 comments:
So awesome! I just hung some bird pictures up in my toddler's room, and one of them is the red-bellied woodpecker--the name makes him laugh. Thanks for sharing!
faggi- i had no idea you were still doing this. you took a 3 month sabtical and i incorrectly assumed it was for good. sorry i have been absent. some great stuff here.
beautiful picture! I love learning from all your nature studies. Very cool!
Thank you for sharing this. I love to see the spots of nature that someone is studying in their area. It has been a long time since I have seen a red-bellied woodpecker, but I remember them well from childhood.
I started reading the post above this and it made me smile because we have been filling up our feeders and have really been enjoying watching the birds, I was beyond excited to see your photos here because I just took photos of this same type of woodpecker! I have never seen one before and this is a first that it has visited. They are stunning, your photos are amazing!
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