{"id":31147,"date":"2015-05-06T05:40:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T11:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=31147"},"modified":"2015-05-06T09:00:46","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T15:00:46","slug":"male-williamsons-sapsucker-reunited-with-an-old-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/06\/male-williamsons-sapsucker-reunited-with-an-old-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Williamson’s Sapsucker – Reunited With An Old Friend?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This may be the same male Williamson’s Sapsucker that I photographed at the nest tree last July (this image was taken 4 days ago in Clark County, Idaho).<\/p>\n

Note: As always I was very careful not to disturb this and other birds at the nest tree. I always shot from my pickup, the tree is within a campsite so the birds are acclimated to vehicles and human activity and I watched for any behaviors that might indicate disturbance.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"williamson's1\/800, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Williamson’s Sapsuckers are monogamous and although they remain together during the breeding season they part after the young fledge. But the same two birds sometimes re-mate in following years and come back to or near their original territory. I never did see a female with this male (sexes are easy to distinguish due to sexual dimorphism) but males arrive on breeding grounds first, several weeks before the female. It’s somewhat unusual for a pair to reuse a nest cavity from the previous year, however they commonly return to the same nest tree and excavate new cavities.<\/p>\n

If I remember correctly this is not the aspen that contained the nest holes\/cavities but it’s right next to the tree that did. At least one of the nest cavities was being contested by flickers, bluebirds, swallows and nuthatches and by the time we left the much larger Northern Flicker had apparently successfully claimed the largest of the cavities (which it continued to enlarge) and I didn’t see the sapsucker come close to the tree again.<\/p>\n

So when it comes right down to it I don’t know for sure if this is last year’s bird or not but I like to think it is. After all, old friends aren’t easy to come by…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note – We arrived home from our camping\/photo\u00a0excursion to Montana and Idaho\u00a0yesterday afternoon. Due to weather\/light issues\u00a0and lack of birds the trip started out slowly but it soon picked\u00a0up considerably\u00a0and in validation of that point I now\u00a0have 4033 images to cull.\u00a0I’ll post more images from the trip as time allows and as the nasty job of culling\u00a0progresses. <\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the fact that I was mostly unable to respond to comments made on posts published while I was gone,\u00a0many of you commented\u00a0anyway.\u00a0Thank you!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This may be the same male Williamson’s Sapsucker that I photographed at the nest tree last July.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,395,2089],"tags":[2053,2032,211,2485,230,276,2039,2038],"class_list":["post-31147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-williamsons-sapsuckers","tag-clark-county","tag-idaho","tag-male","tag-nest-cavity","tag-nesting","tag-sexual-dimorphism","tag-sphyrapicus-thyroideus","tag-williamsons-sapsucker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/williamsons-sapsucker-4824-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-86n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}