Daily Archives: January 15, 2024

Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens)

Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens)

We woke up to about three-quarters of an inch of snow this morning and it kept coming down lightly all day. It never really snowed very hard and there was very little wind, so it was actually quite pretty and nice to be out in it. In the early afternoon we went for a walk, heading down from the neighborhood to Lake Frank. We saw (and I photographed) a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) on the way there and once in the park saw quite a few other small birds, including quite a few downy woodpeckers (Dryobates pubescens). This one moved from a tree to a grape vine and then let me get fairly close. I’m pretty pleased with these two photos, almost certainly the best I’ve taken of this bird species.

I could get pictures of these and many other birds in our yard fairly easily. Downy woodpeckers will almost certainly come if I were to put out suet for them. Nevertheless, there’s something special about getting them totally in the wild. It’s especially nice to get them on a snowy day, which allows a much lighter background than would otherwise be the case in the woods most of the time. The downy woodpecker and its second-cousin the hairy woodpecker (Leuconotopicus villosus) look much alike and at a glance it’s not always easy to tell them apart. The hairy is about 50% larger than the downy, which is especially useful if you see both of them at once. The other noticeable difference is the length of their bill. On the downy is is very short and stubby while on the hairy it is much longer relative to the size of the head.

Both are present but my experience is that the downy is considerably more common, at least in our area. They both can often be heard—drumming on a tree—long before they are seen.