With the onset of cooler weather, the bird feeders hanging outside my window are seeing a lot more action.
Seed and suet feeders are visited many times a day by chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and the woodpecker that is the smallest American member of its family, the downy woodpecker.
Gender is easy to tell; males have a red patch on the back of the head that females lack. If, in late summer, you see one with the red patch on the forehead, it's a juvenile hatched a few weeks earlier.
As I write, a female is pecking the sunflower seeds. When she chooses one, she takes it to a nearby tree where she lodges it in a crevice to hold it securely while hammering the shell open with her beak.
Most birds have four toes: three that point forward and one back. Like most woodpeckers, downies possess four toes: two forward and two back. This arrangement helps them navigate the tree trunks, slender branches, even weeds where the males often forage in the fall for goldenrod gall fly larvae. Stiff tail-feathers are used as props to support the birds' vertical stance on tree trunks.
Downies are difficult to distinguish from hairy woodpeckers that share virtually identical feather patterns. The two species supposedly get their names from the texture of a patch of feathers on the back.
If you see one that looks quite large — the hairy's weight averages more than twice the downy's — and has a really long bill, it might be a hairy woodpecker. But hairies are far less common than downies. During Forsyth Audubon's annual spring bird survey last May, 32 downies were seen and only two hairies.
A year-round resident throughout the U.S., the downy is a common breeder in our area. Like all woodpeckers, they are cavity-nesters that excavate a new nest each year. It takes a pair about two weeks to make a new nest, usually on the underside of a dead branch. Cavity nests shelter the white eggs — usually four to six of them — from weather extremes and a variety of predators. The entrance is just big enough for the parents to enter, about 1¼ inches in diameter. It generally excludes larger mammals and birds.
But they can't keep them all out. Rat snakes, excellent at climbing trees in search of prey, are occasional predators, and flying squirrels and gray squirrels will sometimes raid woodpecker nests to eat eggs and nestlings. Larger woodpeckers — red-bellied, pileated or flickers — often make their nests on the main trunk of a tree. Their nests are larger, and the bigger birds are better-equipped to defend them.
The larger nest entrances usually go in for several inches before turning downward for an additional 8 to 10 inches. The nest is not lined by the parents. It has a layer of fine woodchips. The walls of the nest provide a measure of insulation, so it's easier for the parents, which share incubation duties, to keep the eggs and hatchlings warm.
A different downy is back at my feeding station now. This one is sampling the suet. It's a male, and the afternoon sun ignites the bright patch of red on his head. While the female who was here earlier might have been his mate in the summer, they pay no attention to each other after the nesting season. They're both so charming and pretty, one wonders how they can resist.
- Forsyth Audubon will meet at 7 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Historic Bethabara Park Visitor Center. John Brzorad will speak on the "Energetics of Snowy and Great Egrets." The presentation is free. For information, email ronmorris@triad.rr.com.
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