Sunday, January 19, 2014

hairy woodpecker ~ 01/19/14 ~ Black Hill

 

Ta-da!  This has got to be one of the crappiest pics posted to Nature ID.  I digitally enhanced it as much as possible, too, which is something I rarely do.  Oh well, I think it's good enough to make a positive ID.  It's another new-to-me sp.

The first thing that caught our attention was the tree seemed to be dropping bits and pieces.  What the hey?  Turns out this woodpecker was pulling bits of bark off the tree trunk in between brief bouts of drilling.  Well, that's different.  Hey, where's the red head?  Usually, whenever I notice woodpeckers (rarely), they almost always have a red head, which I assume (probably inaccurately) are the clown-like acorn woodpeckers.  The last thing I noticed was that long white stripe.  Visually it didn't make sense to me that it was located in the middle of the back, because I kept wanting to believe it was on the edge of the wing, like with the sapsuckers.  It really confused me until I looked at my pictures and read up on an ID.  Turns out there's a smaller, cuter look-alike called the downy woodpecker (P. pubescens).  I liked the description on Cornell's site that said the larger hairy woodpecker has a "somewhat soldierly look".  True, true.  Oh, and that pulling bits of bark is to find tasty insects.  They're apparently pretty decent at pest management.  Btw, males do have a small patch of red on the back of the head.

Cool.  Slowly expanding my bird awareness...

3 comments:

Jeannette said...

You actually made a label for crappy photos! Haha! I forgot my camera two days in a row...and was sorry. I do see woodpeckers in our trees and know I need to read up on who it is that see and I might have to make some new blog labels too.

Jennifer said...

I actually saw one of these right out my kitchen window yesterday!

Katie (Nature ID) said...

Jeannette, I thought it was funny, too. There was a group blog with only crappy photos that inspired me to post my own. Other than acorn woodpeckers, I know very little about these kinds of birds, so the insect eating surprised me.

Jennifer, it always amazes me how different our bird spp. are only 1.4 miles apart as the crow flies.