Woodpecker Acrobatics

When you're a woodpecker looking for bugs on branches, you may need to get in positions that look rather perilous. Of course, if you're a woodpecker:

  1. Your feet have developed so as to be good as grasping wood.
  2. Your ability to fly pretty much guarantees you're not going to slip and fall to your death.
The relatively short bill indicates this is a Downy Woodpecker [1], and the red patch on the head indicates it's a male (with a look at a female here). He's perfectly comfortable hanging upside down or climbing on the underside of a branch. And he's foraging in a way that our larger woodpeckers generally don't, searching for bugs on relatively small branches (in contrast with their Hairy Woodpecker cousins).

February 27, 2023 at the Raritan Water Power Canal
Photo 264702796, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

February 27, 2023 at the Raritan Water Power Canal
Photo 264702773, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

[1] Though their beaks would be considered freakishly long if they were sparrows, finches, or cardinals, by woodpecker standards their beaks are almost stubby.

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