Bird Photography Weekly #40

This week's Bird Photography Weekly post is about a member of my favorite family of birds.

On Sunday morning I decided to get out of the house early (5am) and headed north of Franconia Notch in New Hampshire to where I saw my life Black-backed Woodpecker five years ago. I've seen them there again a few times since, as well as on the Caps Ridge Trail where I've led a few trips in the past, but it's been two years since I've seen one, and this woodpecker fanatic was "jonesing for a fix." I arrived at Trudeau Road in Bethlehem, NH at 7am and in about an hour or so found my first male Black-backed Woodpecker.

It was cool and overcast, and the light wasn't great but while he remained in the area, I managed to get a few shots off:

At one point he flew to another tree where there was an relatively fresh cavity, that he explored for a few minutes before flying further into the woods.


Let's take a closer look at the cavity:
This is a typical Black-backed Woodpecker cavity - particularly notice that the bottom of the hole is actually bevelled a little bit where you can see the lighter cambium layer of the tree. Often times I have also noticed scratches and small bits of bark chipped from the tree near the cavity.(Slightly more evident in this digiscoped photo I took a few years ago.)

Black-backed Woodpeckers also have pretty distinct vocalizations, which you can hear at Cornell Lab's All About Birds site here.

While meandering the area a bit more, I noted lighter tapping - more of a foraging sound, and quickly found a female. She flew towards the cavity, called a few times, and the male came in a made a similar sound to what is heard in the link above. She then flew to another tree and peeled the bark off of it a bit.

Every now and again, I remember that the camera has a movie function, although I'm not great with it. Nevertheless this shows the female doing what woodpeckers do:

To see some great bird photos from around the world, check out: