Yesterday (Friday, 26 June) afternoon , just before 2:30, a male \u00a0red-bellied woodpecker made a brief appearance at the feeder* and left with a large chunk of suet in his bill. I suspect that he was carrying the choice tidbit off to a nest, but have no proof of that; he headed into the woods at great speed.<\/p>\n
After the red-bellied departed, I noticed a male downy woodpecker hanging around fairly high in a nearby spruce tree. I thought it odd that he did not approach the now unoccupied feeder. I watched him move about in the spruce tree for some minutes and then, suddenly, he headed for the feeder.<\/p>\n
When I turned my gaze (and lens) to the feeder, I was extremely\u00a0surprised to find three woodpeckers on the trunk… the adult male I had been watching and two juveniles (a male and a female). The female left within a minute, but I watched the adult male feed the juvenile male for another three or four minutes before the adult took off. The juvenile spent a short interval tentatively feeding itself before it, too headed for the woods..<\/p>\n
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* I use custom-made, photogenic suet feeders. These consist of a chunk of tree on a stand to hold it vertically. I drill holes in the “back-side” of the trunk and keep the holes stocked with suet and\/or dried meal worms. \u00a0There… my secret is out!!!<\/p>\n
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Yesterday (Friday, 26 June) afternoon , just before 2:30, a male \u00a0red-bellied woodpecker made a brief appearance at the feeder* and left with a large chunk of suet in his bill. I suspect that he was carrying the choice tidbit off to a nest, but have no proof of that; he headed into the woods […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,92,111,25,3],"tags":[154,152],"class_list":["post-3028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-monadnock-region","category-summer","category-the-yard","category-wildlife","tag-birds","tag-woodpeckers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3028"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3034,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028\/revisions\/3034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}