Reader Karen Bartelt sent a big batch of photos, in three parts; I’ll put up part 1 today, featuring two lovely species of woodpeckers. Her notes are indented.
We took a trip to Big Bend National Park [Texas] this February. The park is famous for an abundance of birds, especially during spring and fall migrations. We were unable to book anything for April, the big month, so we settled for an earlier trip, and used the time to acquaint ourselves with the native birds. Being from the midwest, we saw lots of birds for the first time.
Since I have so much trouble attaching multiple files to my email, I’m going to send three separate emails with a total of 19 or 20 photos.
In this first email, I’ll concentrate on the woodpeckers. The first photo is of a female ladder-backed woodpecker, Picoides scalaris. I got the genus name from the U of Michigan’s Animal Diversity Web. I’ve seen at least two other genus names for this bird. Downy and hairy woodpeckers are both Picoides.
The next five are a series of photos of a male golden-fronted woodpecker, Melanerpes aurifrons. Other Melanerpes in the US includes the red-bellied and the red-headed woodpeckers.
This bird was relentless in digging out large caterpillars from cottonwood bark. He grabbed one and then smashed it against the tree, much like one would stun a fish. Then he sucked it dry. In one photo, he is sticking out his tongue.
The ladder-backed woodpecker looks like she is wearing a shawl in the cold!
We went in late February, and expected temperatures of maybe 75 during the day. It was 90 down by the Rio Grande, where this photo was taken.
Beautiful woodpeckers! I never heard of a golden-fronted woodpecker before.
Owls are my favorites. Nature show on PBS had a program on a few evenings ago called “Owl Power”. It was fascinating and I urge any owl lover to look it up online.
Thanks for reminding me! I was wanting to watch it, but got outvoted by the other humans that live with me. But I can watch it re-play today.
Feeding behavior of the woodpecker is amazing. I never knew!
The red-bellied woodpecker, as mentioned is pretty close to the golden fronted, aurifrons vs the red-bellied carolinus. We have lots of the red-bellied and red headed but the golden fronted does not get this far north apparently.
According to the map on my Merlin app, the golden-fronted woodpecker is found from central Oklahoma through central Texas (Big Bend is about as far west as it gets), into Mexico, and as far south as Nicaragua. it was one of the birds we really wanted to see, so I’m glad we got a good look.
Yes, a warm air woodpecker for sure. That is probably why kansaskitty never sees them and we another 130 miles north of Kansas City do not.
Funny all those years I was in Texas, never saw any.
In the golden-fronted series, one can see that the woodpecker closes its eyes when it stuns its prey. Interesting that it cleans out the insides. Does it eat the body as well?
I never saw whether it ate the whole thing or not. It was very vigorous in its hunting behavior. Our local red-bellieds are content to eat sunflower seeds!
Beautiful! Thanks.
Lovely photos. Big Bend National Park is a great spot for birding. They also have a ranger there who leads great bird walks. I don’t recall his name, but his bird knowledge is vast.
Mark Flippo? He’s retired now, but does guided tours. We went out with him the first day we were there. Nice guy, and very knowledgable.
That golden-fronted woodpecker is gorgeous. I want one 🙂
Simply wonderful.. thanks, Karen and Stephen.