While hanging out at my Dad's, spotted this downy woodpecker hanging out at the suet. I love the almost "Excuse me?!" pose the woodpecker held when a house sparrow decided to land there too.
This downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) was around a few weeks ago then there were still leaves on the crepe myrtles. Here though, he found a dead branch.
You know, the photographs that I post here are not quite a vivid as the same photographs that I post at my pixel's gallery, because here, I reduce the size of the photos and usually make a slight reduction in the quality of the photos to make them easier to load.
Here is a little downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens).
"Male and female Downy Woodpeckers divide up where they look for food in winter. Males feed more on small branches and weed stems, and females feed on larger branches and trunks. Males keep females from foraging in the more productive spots. When researchers have removed males from a woodlot, females have responded by feeding along smaller branches." - allaboutbirds.org
Female Eastern Downy woodpecker
Species:
Location: Hendrie Valley Trails, Royal Botanical Gardens
Woodpeckers don’t sing songs, but they drum loudly against pieces of wood or metal to achieve the same effect. People sometimes think this drumming is part of the birds’ feeding habits, but it isn’t. In fact, feeding birds make surprisingly little noise even when they’re digging vigorously into wood.
TIL Hairy & Downy #woodpeckers have almost identical markings, but Downys are smaller, have smaller beaks in relation to their heads, and have speckled feathers on the sides of their tails. Hairys, OTOH, have a less adorable name, larger beaks, and white side feathers on their tails.
FINALLY caught the local Downy Woodpecker at the feeder today. Makes IDing between the Downy and Hairy very clear. Check the difference in the beaks in the first two pics. The second two pics show the Hairy’s tail is almost the size of the entire Downy. 😆
I've been so, so busy. First there were house repairs, then the difficult once-every-5-years purge of documents, books, and other unwanted/unneeded stuff from around the house. As I've been retired for 5 years, I was finally able to let go of all the remnants of my working life. Here are some pictures from last year about this time: a #hummingbird , a black #swallowtail#butterfly, a #downywoodpecker feeding her fledgling, and a blue dasher #dragonfly. #birds#birding#nature#photography