Red-headed woodpecker

[altivo]

Comments

[heavens_steed]

Neat, you found that crazy Woody ;P Even though I am a suburbanite, the birds seem to frequent our yard and house quite regularly, more so that most of the neighborhood as evidenced by all the droppings :P I think it is because of all the trees that surround the house. I don't regularly go bird watching like you but I have tried to identify some of the species. I have a hard time figuring out what the smaller species are especially since they tend to have more bland, earthy plumage. Jays and Robins are easy to identify. I use to see crows and seagulls fairly often but they seem less frequent these days. We've even had the occasional humming bird but they are so rare that it would be really hard to positively identify what species it is.

[altivo]

There are usually lots of birds in suburban areas. Even trees aren't that necessary if there are shrubs and lawns. You just get different species depending on the nature of the vegetation and food available. The more natural area, the more variety of species of course. Right in the city of Chicago I saw ruby-throated hummingbirds and ruby-crowned kinglets in our own yard, and warblers passing through every spring. Cardinals nested and raised young in our pine trees, and the house finches liked the cedars. Starlings liked our attic, which didn't so much please me. ;p

The red-headed woodpecker is very distinctive in appearance, a sort of comic character with clearly delimited areas of snowy white, coal black, and wine red. But the real model for Walter Lantz's Woody is the pileated woodpecker. In theory we could see those around here, but I don't know anyone even among the birdwatchers who claims to have done so in the last decade or two. I have seen one just once, and it was in Florida within a mile or two of the Gulf Coast

[altivo]

Oh, and I'll bet your local hummingbirds are either the rufous hummingbird or the Anna's hummingbird. Both are noted for their fearlessness and great numbers along the West Coast. As it happens, they are pretty easy to tell apart by their coloration, too. Here there is usually just one choice, the ruby-throated hummingbird. Others get here by accident once in a while, but our only native is the ruby-throat. They are very tiny, smaller than any of our other birds, so much so that I have mistaken them for very large bumblebees in the past.

[ducktapeddonkey]

We saw a huge woodpecker today. Should have gone back for a picture in retrospect. Woodpeckers are cool.

[altivo]

The largest North American woodpeckers are the pileated, the red-bellied, the northern flicker and the red-headed. You must have seen one of those, I think. All have red caps, though the red-headed has more like a hood that comes down to its shoulders on all sides including under the chin. The flicker is large but the red marking is a small triangle on the back of its head. Around here, red-bellied are most common other than the sparrow-sized downy woodpecker. In fact, many people who have never seen a real red-headed will mistake the red-bellied for a red-head. However, its colors are quite different, with the red cap being like a "mohawk" over the crown and down to the nape. The belly is pinkish if you can see it, and the wings are mottled or striped black and white.

The pileated is unmistakeable, just huge, big as a crow with a pointy red crest and a beak like a pencil. A sharp pencil.

[cabcat]

He's not pecking at the little house there is he?

[altivo]

No. There's food inside that but to get at it he'd have to go through the holes in the end. It's sort of a bird puzzle. He might be too large to fit. That particular feeder is designed for bluebirds and is supposed to keep starlings and grackles from stealing all the food and throwing it on the ground as they often do. The nuthatches and the smaller woodpeckers pop right through the hole, take what they want and usually go out the hole on the other end.