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This is the female with a beak-full of ants for her chicks. The nest hole is a little over 1 foot above her but both adults would usually land exactly on this spot before delivering ants to the youngsters in the nest. I believe\u00a0that was\u00a0because the roughness\u00a0of the bark caused by someone carving graffiti into the tree years earlier gave them a spot\u00a0just below\u00a0the nest that was\u00a0easier to hold on to with their claws. From this position on the tree they would fly straight up the leaning trunk of the tree to the nest hole to deliver the ants.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/5.0, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n This is the male in the process of making that short vertical hop from the landing spot on the tree to the nest entrance. I’ve deliberately cropped this image to include the landing spot and the nest hole. Notice that his beak is also full of ants.<\/p>\n The males and females of other woodpeckers are almost identical but the plumage colors of\u00a0the\u00a0sexes of\u00a0this species are so spectacularly different that for many years early naturalists reported them as different species.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n Typically one adult would be in the nest when the other arrived so I was able to get a variety of shots that included the two of them. Here the female is\u00a0preparing to\u00a0leave the hole (thus the leaning\u00a0posture of her mate to avoid\u00a0having his head taken off\u00a0during her explosive exit) and the male is about to deliver his load of ants to the chicks after she leaves. She has some wood chips on her bill left over from her housekeeping duties inside the nest cavity.<\/p>\n Since our weather forecast for the next week looks dismal and dreary and I likely won’t be able to be out photographing birds much I thought this would be a good opportunity to share some sapsucker images that I haven’t posted previously. So it’s my intention to\u00a0follow up this introductory post with some interesting behavioral images\u00a0of these birds sometime in the near future, perhaps as early as tomorrow.<\/p>\n At least that’s my intention but you know what they say about “the best-laid plans of mice and men” so we’ll see what really<\/em> happens…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over two seasons I became very attached to and thoroughly enchanted by this pair of mated Williamson’s Sapsuckers.<\/p>\n![\"williamson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/williamsons-sapsucker-0994b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n![\"williamson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/williamsons-sapsucker-2251-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"williamson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/williamsons-sapsucker-1039-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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