 Hairy and the Hangers On Feeding winter birds is similar to fishing; you put out your bait and then you wait to see what bites. However, rather than pull a line and struggle with slippery fish, you end up with the warm, gratifying sense of helping a wild thing survive winter. Some of my favourite wintertime birds are woodpeckers. Of all the woodpeckers staying through the coldest part of the year, my personal favourite is the Hairy Woodpecker. You too can choose the Hairy Woodpecker as your favourite, or perhaps one of the others. What’s your pick? The Pileated Woodpecker is certainly an attention-getter. Pileated’s are perhaps best known by non-birders because of their impressive size, loud cry, and flashy red crown, the Pileated is the King-Kong of Woodpeckers. A Pileated visited my feeder the other day just to see if he could wrest the title of “favourite woodpecker” from the Hairy Woodpecker, but I stood firm in my decision. I didn’t need binoculars to see the Pileated while it hung 20 feet away on a poplar sapling; nevertheless I used binoculars to assess the details of the crow-sized bird. Woodpeckers always confound my attempts to draw them from memory due to complicated arrangements of black and white face patterns, the Pileated is no different. Unlike smaller black-and-white woodpecker males with red nape-ular accoutrements that are mere smudges, Pileated males and females both have tousled mops rising from the top of their heads. This feature alone might make it a favourite among Woodpecker watchers. But, I still wanted to see a Hairy come to my feeder. Another tree whacker vying for the title of “favourite winter woodpecker” is the diminutive Downy Woodpecker. Several come to my feeder every day, and I watch them all intently. Each species is specially adapted to carve out a niche in a particular habitat. This helps to guarantee a birds continued survival but surely the Downy Woodpecker is shortchanged in the bill department. Perhaps its shorter bill has not yet adapted to manmade food sources. Each Downy Woodpecker gamely endeavors to reach the suet inside my rubberized suet cage. The suet quivers when struck, but I do not know if the Downy actually gets anything to eat. The Downy Woodpecker bobs this way and that and nervously looks for predators approaching from suet cage blind spots, but I still can’t see if the woodpecker actually consumes any food. I draw some comfort from the realization that if the Downy Woodpeckers were unable to get any food from the suet feeders then surely they would stop coming around. The Downy is essentially a Hairy Woodpecker in a smaller size. People ask me how to tell the two species apart, and I say size of body, size of bill, and colour of the outer tail feathers. A Downy’s outer tail feathers are barred black on white. The Hairy’s outer tail feathers are plain white. Hairy Woodpeckers have more prominent bills, but I have seen in-between sized Hairy/Downy Woodpeckers that could only be distinguished though tail feather difference. Despite attempts to look like a Hairy, the Downy still fails to win the “my favourite winter Woodpecker” award. Also in the running for the winter woodpecker title is the odd Northern Flicker which sometimes stays behind and braves a Cariboo winter. These un-woodpecker-coloured Woodpeckers are certainly among my favourite birds but somehow they don’t seem like Woodpeckers. A Woodpecker should have black and white primary colours. Sorry Flicker but you’re out on that count alone. There are two species of Three-toed Woodpeckers. Both are black and white Woodpeckers so they too can be included. Whenever I come upon either Three-toed species I stop to marvel. The butter pats on the heads of the males make them extremely interesting to study but they have one totally un-endearing quality. They never come to human food offerings. So, after some review, it’s back to the Hairy Woodpecker, my choice for “favourite winter woodpecker.” If I had to name some traits that make it a favourite I would start with the black forehead. Many other Woodpeckers also have black foreheads, but it is the forehead width not the colour that endears. The top of the head is wide and slopes just a bit to form the forehead which looks, in good light, like a black waterfall plunging down to the bristle covered black bill. This broad forehead echoes other strong features of the bird. The black and white body portions are in perfect relationship and harmonious scale. Just when a swoop of white might become too tedious it stops and yields to a block of mat black. Mat black blocks give way, but only slightly to bold white dots, then dots give way to delicate barring. Like a minimalist art deco sculpture the Hairy Woodpecker is a magnificent triumph of art but also leads me to a question about all black and white Woodpeckers. How does black and white act as any kind of camouflage for a bird that often finds itself on bare tree trunks? That aside, what makes the Hairy Woodpecker more than a visual success? It is animated by a dancer’s demeanor, a Mr. Fred Astaire of birds. It does not bounce from lamppost to lamppost, singing in the rain. It bounces from tree to tree screeching as snow falls. And as a trophy, Mr. Hairy Woodpecker, you get to be my choice as Woodpecker of winter. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
