Red-bellied Woodpecker

This is the second of the three woodpeckers we get at our feeders. RB is the biggest of the three, but also the shyest. It took forever for him and her (we definitely have seen one of each, but never more than one female or one male at a time) to work his/her way up to our suet feeder that is directly outside our window. I think that area might be too crowded though as he/she hasn't been at that feeder in quite awhile and seems to frequent the solitary suet feeder.

In the late spring, we saw one of the parents going to the suet and flying back into the cover of the oak tree and we were able to spot three little babies who were peeping their hearts out. Unfortunately because they were so well protected, we were unable to get any pictures, but we would rather have successful fledglings than a picture anyway. Hopefully they all made it and are out in new territories.

Here are some shots (some from last year, some from last month) of one of my top five favourite feeder birds.

This is a picture that shows the exception to the rule- for the first time ever (Jan 09) we observed a male RB taking seeds from a feeder, flying into the tree and cracking them open to eat.

The next few pics are the RB enjoying a meal at the suet until a noisy blackbird comes along...the expression on RB's face in the second pic makes me laugh... .


02/10/09- Dave took a pic this past weekend of the RBW flying in to grab a peanut. Usually the bluejays monopolize this, but it was a little less crowded with jays and the RBW was able to get in there too.