![\"williamson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/williamsons-sapsucker-2513-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI worked all day yesterday (with time out for a\u00a0much-needed and lengthy nap)\u00a0culling thousands of\u00a0images from the Montana\/Idaho trip but as the day ended and the dreaded\u00a0fireworks began I still had 1449 photos left to sift through so this will be another relatively short post.\u00a0 I should be able to complete the\u00a0much-loathed culling chore sometime this morning.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 370mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Since my previous post featured the highly colorful male I decided to focus on the more\u00a0subtly hued\u00a0female this morning.\u00a0\u00a0 Here she’s delivering ants to her hungry chicks in the nest-hole.\u00a0\u00a0For much of the year Williamson’s Sapsuckers feed exclusively on conifer phloem and sap but\u00a0they shift mainly to ants when the young hatch.\u00a0 This species depends\u00a0more heavily on ants than any other North American woodpecker.<\/p>\n It was fascinating to see how many ants an adult could hold in its beak.\u00a0 It appears to me that each one is grasped by one or more of its legs with the body hanging outside the bill (perhaps to partially protect from bites from any that may still be alive?).\u00a0 In certain light the insects caused the beak to appear\u00a0strangely shaped\u00a0but in this image I think what’s going on is clear.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 370mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Here she’s leaving the nest after delivering the ants in the previous image.<\/p>\n Williamson’s Sapsuckers are unique among woodpeckers for having spectacular sexual differences in plumage color.\u00a0 As you may have seen in my previous post <\/a>the male is black, bright red, yellow and white but the female is mostly “cryptic brown” with a yellow belly.\u00a0 Early naturalists were confused by these color differences into thinking males and females were separate species.\u00a0 Since no other woodpeckers\u00a0(including the sapsuckers)\u00a0exhibit these differences their error was understandable.<\/p>\n In yesterday’s post I mentioned that during these sessions with the sapsuckers (as opposed to my previous camping trip)\u00a0I experimented more with gear and technique for action shots.\u00a0 For these two images I used my 100-400 mm zoom lens to give me more flexibility with the rapidly changing situation\u00a0than I get with my 500 mm prime lens.\u00a0 On average the zoom\u00a0provides slightly diminished image quality\u00a0but\u00a0I was\u00a0more than pleased\u00a0with these images.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since my previous post featured the more colorful male I decided to focus on the more subtly hued female this morning. <\/p>\n![\"williamson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/williamsons-sapsucker-2524-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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