ML23029121

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

This one totally shocked me. I was just going to start walking up the easement along the "canyon hole", and instead I walked slightly west about 100 yards to look down into an area that separates our community from Mountain View Estates just to our west. I often times see our resident male Vermilion Flycatcher, who has been seen every month since he was discovered on the December 2012 Christmas bird count in this area around a bunch of Pepper Trees. Suddenly something much larger than the Vermilion Flycatcher and with even brighter red color popped in my view at the base of one of the Pepper Trees. I was shocked to quickly realize that it was a Woodpecker. I have never seen any woodpeckers in our Country Club before except for Northern Flickers. I felt sorry for this woodpecker as he or she kept going from one Pepper Tree to the next, and even to a few Washingtonian Palm Trees trying to apparently get sap, or at least get sap holes made. I got plenty of pictures of him. Let me know if they show any evidence that he or she might be a hybrid bird versus a full Red-breasted Sapsucker as more than a few of the pictures seem to show some yellow tint to part of its belly. A additional side note is as of 1-11-16, Riverside County Ebird expert moderator Curtis Marantz let me know that this bird has been looked at by at least 3 experts, including himself, Kimball Garrett and John Dunn and has been identified as the very rare Northern subspecies of the Red-breasted Sapsucker, which per Curtis is very rare anywhere in Southern California.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D3200

ISO

400

Focal length

200 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/1000 sec

Dimensions

1439 pixels x 1233 pixels

Original file size

498.39 KB