Young Woodpecker

The Red-bellied Woodpecker pair that I’ve been seeing all spring has managed to produce at least one offspring.  This youngster has joined its male parent at the feeder for a lesson on consuming sunflower seeds.  It waits on the branch while its father fetches the food.

The parent begins by selecting a sunflower seed from the feeder.

The selected morsel is carried up to the dead tree trunk to be deposited into the male bird’s preferred seed shelling hole.  The woodpecker never fails to have a good look around before placing the seed into the hole.

The hole may be a way of safeguarding the secret to shelling sunflower seeds.  More likely, it just holds the seed in place while the bird breaks in to remove the meat.

As the parent works, the youngster moves closer in anticipation of being fed.

The parent is quite practiced at opening sunflower seeds and has a meal ready in seconds.  The young bird gets its food and the parent hops back down to the feeder to begin the process again.  After about a dozen seeds, the pair went to the ground for some cracked corn.  At last they headed off to the trees, hopefully to balance their diet with some more natural food items.

A Camera Critters submission.

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Most birds that I see in the yard are here because of the feeders.  They spend time eating close to the house, but much of their time is spent in the surrounding woods and fields behaving as birds should.  Occasionally, an individual bird becomes noticeable because of its continuous presence in the yard.  This Red-Bellied Woodpecker has become one of those birds.

I’ve seen this male Red-Bellied Woodpecker visiting the feeder for several months.  It’s usually a morning visitor to the sunflower seed feeder and although I’ve never seen him actually eat one, he makes off with several seeds every day. 

He’s easy to recognize, because he hides his seeds in a hole in the tree that’s only a few feet from the feeder.  Quite a bit of time is spent getting them situated just right.

When the seed is finally in place, he looks all around as though he wants to make sure he was not observed adding to his food cache.

After he’s stored a sufficient amount of seed, he heads off to the Silver Maple or one of the Black Walnuts near the edge of the yard.  This is usually his preening time.

Recently, he’s been giving a lot of attention to the lower side of one of the branches of the dead Silver Maple.  That part of the tree is not visible from the window.  When I saw his head and upper body disappear from sight, I had a good idea of what was going on.

I guess if he’s going to spend all of his time in the yard, he ought to have his home here.  He won’t get much exercise with the feeder only eight feet from his front door.  It would really be neat if a woodpecker pair actually nested in this hole.