Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
It's not that difficult to photograph a woodpecker's tongue. Set your camera to burst and you'll get a good shot. They use their tongues quite a bit. This is not the first time I've gotten a photograph of a bird tongue. But it's the best one!
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After posting a rather long post on my other blog about how to identify downy and hairy woodpeckers, I am now stumped. I think this is a downy but I'm not sure. If it is, it is a male demonstrating aggressive behavior that I usually associate with hairy woodpeckers. Oh well.
UPDATE (3/30/2011): it is a downy. But now, I find I have contradicted myself when I said that downy woodpeckers don’t have the intense eyes that hairy woodpeckers have. Oh well.
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Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens )(
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Downy woodpecker, Picoides pubescens
The wind was so hard this morning that all the birds had problems flying. At times, the woodpeckers looked like white fluffy blurs.
This female had hopped to this portion of the branch. I had her framed and focused when suddenly she slipped out of sight. She actually hit a patch of ice and slid off the branch. I managed to catch her as she went down.
She quickly recovered and perched here to compose herself. She reminded me of a cat that has fallen and looks all bewildered.
The body stayed still. The head moved so quickly that it was blurry.
A different view in full sunlight. Never too many bird photos.
I'll be posting a few times a day until I tire of the birds. But how could that happen? I'm running down to the village soon for different feeders (see my feeder post) so that I can attract different birds.
This little guy is funny. He hops around the poor battered tree (see a close-up of his work at the end of this post) backwards, as if repelling with ropes but without the ropes, sideways and upside down. He is never there, as far as I can see, when the chickadees are there.
In the post previous to this, I had chickadee photos. I don't like any of them. I think I zoomed in too far, creating noise that I can't get rid of. I backed off a bit and let iPhoto cropping get the detail here. I'm much happier. I have to remember not to try too hard.
