For all I knew, the Three-toed Woodpecker was a mythical beast—a joke perpetrated on amateurs by field guides so as to say: we are going to fix it so you never get to see this one.
That was until yesterday when my friend, Doug Thorburn, asked if I would like to see one. Yes. After a half hour rapidly ascending a muffler-destroying forest-service road, we parked. Ten meters along a rude trail was a nest cavity and around us were the sounds of hammering and calling.
Maybe the field guides were right.
A male Three-toed Woodpecker explores a tree, probably looking for the larvae of wood-boring beetles, which it favours. This woodpecker is named for its feet, which lack inner rear toes.
The female lacks the male’s yellow crown. This one has brought some of those larvae to the nest cavity.
And passes them directly to the bill of its chick.
Both parents feed their nestlings.
Doug even arranged the time of day so the light was good for photography. Maybe next week we can see heads poking out of the cavity.
Well done Alistair, such superb photos they are indeed. Simply Beautiful.
cheers, Paul W.
Paul, it was unexpected to see something for the first time and simultaneously get good pictures of it.
Yes, the two things don’t happen together very often do they Alistair. Nice…I hadn’t a picture in my head of what they looked like because I thought my chances of seeing one were and are somewhere in the realm of the lightening/lottery odds. Now that I’ve had a refresher maybe I can at least recognize one if I should ever be that lucky.
unreal shot of the female. Well done!