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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/threetoed130702cs.jpg\")
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For all I knew, the Three-toed Woodpecker was a mythical beast—a joke\u00a0perpetrated on amateurs\u00a0by field guides so as to say: we are going to fix it so you never get to see this one.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Maybe the field guides were right.<\/p>\n
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.
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The female lacks the male’s yellow crown. This one has brought some of those larvae to the nest cavity.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/threetoed130702as.jpg\")
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And passes them directly to the bill of its chick.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/threetoed130702ds.jpg\")
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Both parents feed their nestlings.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/threetoed130702bs2.jpg\")
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Doug even\u00a0arranged\u00a0the time of day so the light was good for photography. Maybe next week we can see heads poking out of the cavity.<\/p>\n
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For all I knew, the Three-toed Woodpecker was a mythical beast—a joke\u00a0perpetrated on amateurs\u00a0by 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 … Continue reading