![]() ![]() Birds of the Pacific Northwest are tinged gray on the back and gray-buff below. ![]() Pacific coast birds have reduced white spotting on the wing coverts and secondaries such white spotting is most highly developed in birds east of the Rockies. Southeastern birds are smaller and slightly grayer below than boreal and northeastern birds. The 7 subspecies differ mainly in size (northern birds generally larger), underpart color (white to gray tinged), amount of black in rectrices, and amount of white spotting in wings. Juvenile: as in other pied woodpeckers, both sexes have a pale red patch in the center of the crown, more extensive in male. Male has a small red nuchal patch, lacking in the female. Outer tail feathers white with limited black spotting variable white spotting on the upperwing coverts and barring on the remiges. Underparts unmarked white (to grayish buff in some populations). Adult: black crown, auricular and malar upper back, scapulars and rump black, but a broad white stripe extends down the center of the back. The small size and often acrobatic foraging on small branches and twigs are distinctive, and the plumage pattern can be confused only with the hairy. In all respects it suggests a small version of the hairy woodpecker, both differing from our other species by the broad white stripe down the back. This may be explained by the fact that they spend more time foraging on vertical surfaces, such as tree trunks, and thus use their tail as a brace more often than their male counterparts, which spend most of their time foraging on smaller horizontal branches.Our smallest woodpecker, the downy is also among our most widespread and familiar species it is a confiding bird that often visits feeders. Female Downy Woodpeckers have slightly longer tails than do the males.Male Downy Woodpeckers are dominant over female downies and select the best feeding sites for their own use and defend them against the females.Scientific tests have determined that Downy Woodpeckers do actually use the presence or absence of the red patch on the back of other downies head to determine whether they are male or female.The feather pattern on the back of the head of Downy Woodpeckers is unique to every bird and downies may use them to recognize other individual downies.As a result, Downy Woodpeckers in northern Canada are about 12 percent larger than they are in Florida. In winter, small birds tend to lose heat faster than larger birds due to the ratio of surface area to weight.The Downy Woodpecker was first formally described by the Swedish biologist, Carolus Linnaeus in 1766.The smallest North American woodpecker is the Downy Woodpecker at 6" in length.While not a true sapsucker, the Hairy Woodpecker seems to enjoy a sweet drink on occasion as they have been reported to drink from sapsucker wells, hummingbird feeders and even sugar cane plants.Beetle larvae and ants make up the largest portions of the Hairy Woodpecker’s natural diet.The Downy’s head is twice as wide as its very short bill. To help distinguish the difference between a Hairy and a Downy Woodpecker visiting your feeders, look for the Hairy’s chisel-like bill which is much longer than the Downy, which often equals the width of the rest of the head.Most species of woodpeckers are born completely naked, unlike many other birds that are completely covered with soft down feathers when they hatch. ![]() During cold winter weather, tree-foraging birds such as woodpeckers do not increase their body fat as much as ground-foraging birds, probably due to the fact that they roost in cavities overnight and that snowfall rarely hampers their ability to find food in trees as compared with birds searching for it on the ground.Woodpeckers have a better sense of smell than most birds and may be able to detect the strong odour of the formic acid that ants, bark beetles and termites excrete (smells like Sweet Tarts.).When feeding on wood, grubs make an audible sound that could be heard by a woodpecker.As the woodpecker strikes the tree, hollow sounds may echo off of the tunnels (galleries) of wood boring insects (like thumping a watermelon.).Woodpeckers may find their hidden prey by sound and/or smell. ![]()
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