Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Woodpeckers and Acorns

While we were in Hart Park we saw plenty of woodpeckers. Most common were Acorn Woodpeckers, which have been a favorite of ours for years because they mean that we're in the Davis Mountains of Texas or Southeastern Arizona. Now we can add California to the list.

Acorn Woodpeckers are known for creating community caches of food by drilling holes in trees, poles, and buildings and storing acorns there. We were lucky to see an Acorn Woodpecker actually placing an acorn into a cache!
I've got this excellent acorn...
I need to find the right hole.
In it goes!
Perfect
There were also plenty of Northern Flickers.
Northern Flicker
These are the "Red-shafted" variety, which means that their feathers have red shafts. The more eastern birds are "Yellow-shafted".
Northern (Red-shafted) Flicker
We also saw the most western sapsucker, the Red-breasted Sapsucker.
Red-breasted Sapsucker
Red-breasted Sapsucker 
Hart Park turned out to have a couple of pretty nice disc golf courses, and a lot of great birds!

Mark

2 comments:

  1. We've seen the stored acorns before but didn't know who or what was responsible. Now we know!

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  2. Great pictures and very educational post.

    Thanks you two.

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