I keep a pair of bird feeders hanging outside my office window, where I can always peek around my monitor to see who is visiting. But a couple of days ago, a raccoon raided the suet feeder, and it took until this morning to get the feeder reloaded. Apparently, there was pent up demand as before the door closed, I had (smallest to largest): Downy woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Red bellied Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, and Pileated Woodpecker all sitting on the deck, waiting for their go at the lump of rendered fat and seeds.
So, though the angle wasn’t the best and I was hugging the shadows to keep the whole crew from taking flight, I grabbed a camera to see just how how many woodpeckers I could snap in a few minutes.
Here’s just a few images, all shot in under five minutes, showing a bit of variety in just this one family of birds in one very small area.
Sorry that the colors and details are a little less than they could be. It’s an overcast day, and I was shooting from across a room and through a window. But it was fun to see all these guys scrambling for the bounty they had missed on Saturday. The big Pileated is staring at me through the window at this moment, sending along a solid message of “Don’t forget again.”