{"id":49935,"date":"2017-07-13T05:26:34","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T11:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=49935"},"modified":"2017-07-13T05:26:34","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T11:26:34","slug":"my-first-look-at-the-red-naped-sapsucker-chick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/13\/my-first-look-at-the-red-naped-sapsucker-chick\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Look At The Red-naped Sapsucker Chick"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was so much fun to finally actually see this youngster!<\/p>\n

I’ve been watching a Red-naped Sapsucker nest cavity since the first day of my camping trip (for reasons I’ll explain later I’m convinced there’s only one chick in the nest). For the first two days I never saw the chick because the adults would stick their heads into the cavity to feed it. On the third day the youngster was mature and aggressive enough that I could occasionally see its bill sticking out of the nest entrance.<\/p>\n

But two days ago I finally got a good look at the youngster’s head.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In a couple of hours off watching as the adults repeatedly (every 5-10 minutes or so) brought food to the chick this was only the second time the youngster’s head came far enough out of the hole to see its head.<\/p>\n

The chick is extremely aggressive in its attempts to grab the food (usually ants or yellow grubs of some kind) from the adult and I believe that the adult was surprised that this time the chick came so far out of the hole to get the food. In fact it even seemed to be annoyed or even\u00a0angered because…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/ 6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

the adult pulled away from the chick without giving it any food (ants inside the bill that can’t be seen)…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

and immediately flew away, squawking angrily all the way.<\/p>\n

In each of the previous feeding trips\u00a0over many days the adults always (without a single exception) had flown straight up on the tree after delivering the food. But this time the adult flew off laterally, landed in a tree right in front of my pickup, and continued to squawk in apparent anger. I can only presume it was either surprised at the aggressive chick unexpectedly\u00a0sticking its head so far out of the hole or perhaps the youngster poked the adults eye with its bill. I don’t really know what happened but it’s interesting to speculate.<\/p>\n

One more thing of interest. The incessant begging calls from the chick inside the cavity are nothing short of impressive. I estimate that the chick calls about 2.5 times per second and it never, ever ceases<\/em>. I can only assume it goes on all day long. In many, many hours I’ve only noticed a few pauses lasting for 3-5 seconds. The energy required to keep that up must almost equal that provided by the food it gets from the adults…?<\/p>\n

And not once have any of the calls from inside the cavity sounded like there’s more than one chick in the nest. And I’ve only seen one head and\/or bill poking out of the opening at a time, even though clutch size of this species is usually 3-7 eggs.<\/p>\n

I can hardly wait to see what develops at the nest cavity today.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was so much fun to finally actually see this youngster!<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49937,"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":[334,392,391,1894],"tags":[2091,3458,2053,3002,2032,2485,1895,1896,3457],"class_list":["post-49935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-naped-sapsuckers","tag-ants","tag-begging-calls","tag-clark-county","tag-feeding-chicks","tag-idaho","tag-nest-cavity","tag-red-naped-sapsucker","tag-sphyrapicus-nuchalis","tag-targhee-national-forest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/red-naped-sapsucker-4638b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cZp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49935","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=49935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}