The interesting facts from whatbird.com:
- A group of woodpeckers has many collective nouns, including a “descent”, “drumming”, and “gatling” of woodpeckers.
- As the smallest North American woodpecker, the Downy can drill cavities in dead trees or limbs that measure as little as 10 cm around. This means that it can live in a wider range of habitat than can larger woodpeckers.
- Males tend to feed in the tops of trees on branches that are small in diameter, females feed midlevel and lower on larger diameter branches.
- The Downy Woodpecker uses sources of food that larger woodpeckers cannot, such as the insect fauna on weed stems.
Morning Bray Farm 
April 4, 2011 at 6:13 am
They are gorgeous!! We get some of them (or similar ones) at our suet bird feeder from time to time, but they seem to love the neighbor’s wood siding even more (much to their dismay!).
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April 4, 2011 at 6:18 am
Nice shots!!! 🙂
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April 4, 2011 at 6:50 am
Isn’t it funny that they (bird naming folks) didn’t give him a name that includes his red hat? Great shots!!
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April 4, 2011 at 6:52 am
Beautiful photos, as always. We see those guys out at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, but very infrequently. I always love the little flash of red on top of the head.
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April 4, 2011 at 7:19 am
What a beautiful red head:)
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April 4, 2011 at 7:19 am
Oh, and a question: what kind of lens did you use to take this picture?
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April 4, 2011 at 8:40 am
Nice capture!
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April 4, 2011 at 8:43 am
Love the names for a group of woodpeckers – the descent is reminiscent of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”!
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April 4, 2011 at 8:44 am
I was walking to work on Friday and saw some movement on the groung by some bushes one foot away. An orange cheeked flicker was foraging. Your woodpecker photos are excelent!
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April 4, 2011 at 11:57 am
Beautiful shots! I understand the ‘drumming’ part! They drive us crazy here drumming on the metal a/c units! ack!
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April 4, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Gorgeous! We have one or two woodpeckers that show up in the summer and have the holes in our shed to prove it. Over a dozen trees in our yard alone and they pick on the shed. I like the “gatling” reference and wonder which came first – the gun or the woodpecker?
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April 4, 2011 at 12:24 pm
A woodpecker!! Isn´t he georgous with his red cap? Great shots Justina!
I can hear “mine” often and see him sometimes, but to far to get good photos.
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April 4, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Great photos!
Love woodpeckers. Here in my region we have yellow woodpeckers and red woodpeckers too.
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