Hairy Woodpecker

My son Sam sounded surprised when I told him I'd never seen a hairy woodpecker. I'd heard of them, but knew nothing about them. I got a sense from his reaction that they were a dime a dozen, a bird he'd seen many times. To me it sounded like a foreign creature well outside my orbit. When he mentioned the pileated woodpeckers he'd seen in Nevada City (a post of several days ago), I read up on the Woodpecker Preserve in Nevada City he'd told me about and noted that the hairy woodpecker was also found there. That was more incentive for me to head up to northern California. On my third hike around the Orene Wetherall Trail (on my first two rounds I saw no woodpeckers), I sat on a bench at the half-way point, right above a canal. As I sat I faintly heard the slight tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker and turned around to look at a large tree behind me. Eventually I saw the woodpecker, my first (and so far only) hairy woodpecker, and I watched it quite a while, taking lots of photos. This was a consolation prized for the as-of-then unseen pileated woodpecker (which I saw on my fourth hike around the Orene Wetherall Trail). 

The white feathers in the middle of the back give it its name. This one is close to having two side-by-side red patches. 

Adults are primarily black on the upper parts and wings and a tail that is black except for white outer feathers. The throat and belly are white (to sooty brown depending on subspecies), as is the back and spotting on the wings. The long filamentous white or whitish feathers in the middle of the back  give it its name. Males have a red patch (or two side-by-side patches) on the back of the head. There is also a white bar above and below the eye. It is virtually identical to the downy woodpecker (which I'd also not seen and are found in this Woodpecker Reserve), except the downy is much smaller and has a shorter bill relative to the size of its head.

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World.

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World. The red cap is the difference.

It varies geographically more than almost any other North American bird species which is why it has 17 subspecies. 

Range from Birds of the World.