ML326296911

Age and sex

Adult Male - 1

Behaviors

Foraging or eating

Observation details

Jeff MacQueen first noted this woodpecker, after I had written it off as a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker by the drumming alone (it wasn't). Clearly a male Black-backed Woodpecker; note the black back, the yellow poll, and the white mustache. Separable from the similar American Three-toed Woodpecker by the amount of black on the back. This bird was in prime BBWO territory; a coniferous spruce forest in a boggy, wet area near some beaver ponds. It stayed around eight to thirty feet up, staying on a single tree for only a minute at most. Classic BBWO side-angle head lookup pose at times. I had looked for these here the previous year, but failed to find them. This is the first recorded BBWO in Caledonia on eBird since 1997, and the first in Stannard, which is quite the treat - doubly so considering we found a female BBWO shortly afterwards (on another checklist). I photographed the bird, and recorded audio of it tapping at a tree.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D500

Lens

200.0-500.0 mm f/5.6

ISO

400

Focal length

500 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/1000 sec

Dimensions

2046 pixels x 1364 pixels

Original file size

2.22 MB