A transplanted Southern Californian living in North Dakota Idaho, with some insights on life with deaf dogs, a gluten free spouse, and the occasional mischievous garden gnome. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy.





Thursday, November 10, 2011

Hairy Woodpecker Visit

No this isn't some segue into a bad joke or grimace inducing pun.  We have a good number of woodpeckers here in our homestead in North Dakota, and the other day I happened to snap a pretty good photo of a Hairy Woodpecker on a tree in the backyard.  I even circled it on the photo for ease of locating it. 
You can't quite see the red patch on his head, but you can read more about the Hairy Woodpecker and see much better pictures that the one I have here.

The Hairy Woodpecker isn't the biggest of the woodpeckers that live in North Dakota, that honor goes to the Pileated Woodpecker (See more info and pictures here).  We had a Pileated Woodpecker briefly stop and visit us last fall off and on for a few weeks.  On the couple of occasions where he was working on a tree, you could certainly hear it, the sound was unmistakable and LOUD.

Alycia's parents had a Pileated Woodpecker in their backyard for a few months over the summer who hollowed out a significant size cavity on a dead tree.  It was pretty impressive to see the size of the hole and the amount of sawdust and tree chunks produced by just one bird. 

1 comment:

Karen said...

Now those are some industrious flying woodchippers. I have no quarrel with them when they are working on hollowing out dead trees, but when they go after my young trees we are not amused. (And yes, that is a royal 'we' as in a majestic plural.)

They are really prehistoric-looking, aren't they? But the same thing can be said of my chickens, especially when I stare at them when they're marauding around the yard in search of hapless bugs. Just imagine them about 100' tall and chasing you....ok, don't. That's the stuff of nightmares.