RBG. Hendrie Valley, Burlington ON. April 20th.2021. Half of birding is having the advance knowledge to anticipate what might be present; the other half is the luck of an out-of-place surprise or unexpected attention-getter. I had one of those attention-getters this afternoon, this Hairy Woodpecker, it popped up right in front of me. Not that it was out of place, it was just minding its own business creating for me an encounter worth taking time to enjoy.
It came about when I was making an afternoon circuit of one of our transect routes. The day was turning chilly with snow expected overnight, the product of a two-day cold front on its way. It’s a reminder that April is a creature born with one foot in the remnants of winter. The circuit was little bit discouraging although a trio of Ospreys were interesting.
The Ospreys had discovered a young Bald Eagle who was trying to stay out of sight and they were letting it know that it was unwelcome. It’s the continuance of an inter-species grudge that I suspect goes back a long way. Some years ago, I watched three Bald Eagles, an adult leading two juveniles, in a purposeful chase of an Osprey that had just caught a large fish. The eagles soon caught up to the twisting and turning Osprey which, perhaps as a result of hard lessons learned, chose to let go of its fish. I expected the eagles to make a mid-air catch, but instead the fish fell several hundred feet to the river below and, as far as I could see, that was the end of it. Perhaps if the fish survived its initial capture and the fall, there was a happy ending; but there seemed to be nothing in it for either Osprey or eagles. Just a grudge match.
But back to the woodpecker.
As I progressed along a quiet but well-worn woodland path I noticed this Hairy Woodpecker absorbed in the business of bashing a decaying log to pieces. It must have been well worth his while because my approach meant nothing to him. In the end I was able to sit a few metres away and watch. I know from the recorded time on my photos that I watched for sixteen minutes at least– a long time in the fleeting-moments world of birding.
Hairy Woodpeckers are common enough and rarely hold our attention for long, but this one, a male by the red patch on his nape, is in his prime and I took 180 photos (although deleted 158 when I got home), here are a few of the keepers. He is a handsome creature, well fed, probably matched with a mate and in charge of his corner of the woodpecker world, and My Bird of the Day today.
One handsome fellow! Snow in April is always seems cruel.