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Showing posts with label woodpecker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woodpecker. Show all posts
Saturday, July 16, 2022
Sunday, December 12, 2021
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Oklahoma Winter Bird Profile: Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
White stripe from bill to belly, less red than black on the head and males' throat, bold white upperwing coverts, and that will likely equal a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker wintering bird. Even rarely, one might even discover the adult black-crowned female. With a similar call to a flicker with the wick-a-wick-a, and Queeh-yah, one will soon spot this uncommon bird, if it is heard. It is usually less active than many other woodpeckers, and will tap quietly. Its small, shallow holes are usually in line vertically, where they will feed upon sap and the insects contained therein.
These woodpeckers have strong, straight bills. In winter they can be found in orchards, favoring deciduous trees. It will hybridize with the Red-naped and Red-breasted Sapsuckers of the west in appropriate zones.
This woodpecker is sometimes considered a pest, as its feeding habits are known to seriously damage trees due to frenzied feeding practices. They will gird trees, meaning that they will remove an entire ring of bark around a tree that insects will permeate.
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Northwest Payne County CBC, 2017
Even though the lemony belly can be difficult to observe on perching birds, one's chances will be better on maple, aspen, and fruit trees, due to their strong sap production. Due to its continual work with seeking sap, these woodpeckers tend to help feed insects, hummingbirds, bats, porcupines, butterflies, and warblers with their overzealous work.
The Spanish woodpecker will readily avail itself to back yards for suet, sugar water, jelly, and small pieces of sweet desert, like donuts or Danish.
Look for a photo of an immature Yellow-bellied Sapsucker here:
https://debhirt.blogspot.com/2016/01/first-of-year-spectacular-shots.html
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Oklahoma Vagrants: Acorn Woodpecker
ja-cob, ja-cob or wake-up, wake-up
Common in oak woods or mixed oak woods, this gregarious and clownlike appearing woodpecker gathers acorns to store in drilled poles, buildings, or trees.
Discovered in Oklahoma in 2012 at the Wichita Mountains NWR, as a single bird, it hasn't been seen since--yet.
Acorn Woodpecker
Madera County, AZ 2018
Half of its diet consists of acorns and the other half is insects (usually ants), fruit, seeds, and sometimes eggs from other birds. Acorns are stashed for the winter, which might stimulate the need to breed. There are sometimes so many in granaries, they cannot all be eaten, and some will rot. Others will be stolen, some will be lost, and others will be oak trees. Acorn Woodpeckers will also consume sap from trees, as well as the insects found in the sap. Sometimes they will even investigate the sap wells of sapsuckers.
Due to the huge cache, these locations will be guarded very well. Thieves tend to include squirrels and jays. Not all Acorn woodpeckers will use storage areas, sometimes just using natural tree cavities, and bark cracks will suffice. If these sometimes magnificent stores are eaten, the woodpeckers will go to Mexico to winter.
During breeding season, family members will help with brooding and feeding, as well as other birds that might join together to defend the valuable storage granaries. Older birds of the season might hold jobs as helpers to learn how to successfully raise young. Breeding coalitions are usually brothers and sisters, and inbreeding is very rare, due to the nature of unsuccessful breeding. When several females nest together, they generally deposit all eggs in one nest cavity. When all the females begin to lay, they will no longer destroy eggs that might have been in the cavity.
Non-native species, like European Starlings, are always a threat to nest cavity success in woodpecker families, especially in urban and semi-urban areas. Mature forests are paramount to the needs of these woodpeckers. Human preservation of oak and pine-oak stands are a necessity to the strength of the species, as well as conservation of snags and intact dead limbs.
Friday, September 14, 2018
Casual Birds of Oklahoma: Lewis's Woodpecker
A common bird of the west, it was unheard of in Oklahoma until it arrived in 2013 at Taylor Lake in Grady, and it still remains today at Fort Towson in Choctaw. It remained at Lake Carl Blackwell from November 2014 - March 2015. Perhaps it will be located again in the fall of 2018. It certainly has been in quite a few places in Oklahoma.
This bird was named by ornithologist Alexander Wilson for Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame. Lewis discovered this species while surveying areas for the Louisiana Purchase in 1804-06.
It may look like a woodpecker, but it appears to be a cross between a crow and a flycatcher. There is also no other woodpecker with the same color scheme. For a woodpecker, even the bill is thinner than most. In appropriate light, this bird is dressed with a dark green back, dark red face, pink belly, and gray collar.
Lewis's Woodpecker
Lake Carl Blackwell, 2014
Flight is slow with frequent gliding and it perches upright on bare branches to sally after insects.
When the Lewis's Woodpecker was at Lake Carl Blackwell, it had a beautiful intact snag all to itself, and it would fly from it to pine trees for a short time, then return. Once that snag was no more, neither was the bird.
These birds are threatened by changing forests due to fire suppression, logging and grazing. These events will result in high densities of pines of the same age, as well as few standing nest snags.
This bird enjoys sitting out in the open, as opposed to heavy cover like most woodpeckers do. It forages for berries and nuts, and in the fall will shell and store same in cracks and crevices of trees to consume in winter. It will even partake of food at feeders, but has an aggressive nature.
The male constructs a nest in a cavity in a dead tree branch. The female will incubate during the day and the male takes over at night. Incubation is just under two weeks, and the young will leave the nest cavity in four or five weeks.
Now that the woodpecker is appearing more and more, it has lost its accidental status, and might just well become a breeding bird at some point. After all, they do like large cottonwoods along creek beds, and those ponderosa pines are always attractive and always will be, which we do have here in Oklahoma. We are right next door to states that have them breeding there, so it makes sense that they are exploring for more territory, especially with rising temperatures over the past decades.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Oklahoma Breeding Bird Species Profile: Red-bellied Woodpecker
The Red-bellied Woodpecker is common in mature deciduous forest of most of the eastern part of the US, but that turns to mixed pine forests in the south. The range is moving north, as many other species are, where it responds to bird feeders more often.
churrrr-churrrrr-churrrr!
This woodpecker has a red nape and a rarely visible red wash on the belly, which is odd that it would be named after that minor characteristic. It is more well known for zebra like stripes across its back and the scarlet red nape, with the male's full red cowl. The zebra woodpecker is well constructed with a chisel shaped bill and barbed tongue, which serves it well at extricating its favorite insects from trees. If it finds small fish, nestlings, eggs, fruit, nuts or mice, it will eat them, too. Its food pleasures are unlimited, even down to other species' nestlings, lizards, and acorns.
Adult Male Red-bellied Woodpecker
Boomer Lake Park, 2016
The European Starling will watch from other trees as well as from the cavity tree and take the finished hollow away from the zebra-backs that have spent days on excavating it. Then they will quietly go about constructing another hole in the same tree, either above or below the original, when they find that they are unable to take their first orifice back.
The tongue can extend two inches from the bill in order to extract insects from their hiding places in cracks within tree bark. They prefer snags or dying trees for both foraging and nesting. They opt for eating the emerald ash borer if they can get it, but also rely heavily on beetles and other boring insects.
Female Red-bellied Woodpecker
Boomer Creek, 2016
Woodpeckers in general provide nest holes for several other species that need an abandoned cavity. This includes the Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadee, wrens, and Eastern Bluebirds. Not only do they use trees, but they will also make cavities in telephone poles or fenceposts. Sometimes they will even drum upon the wooden siding of a residence in order to simply claim territory, shake insects loose, or even make an attempt for a chamber.
Juvenile Red-bellied Woodpecker
Boomer Creek, 2016
Red bellied-woodpeckers and Golden-fronted Woodpeckers, which are more commonly found in Texas, cross the state line and will hybridize in western parts of Oklahoma. If you are in that area, look closely to ascertain what you might have, as the two species are easily confused.
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