Lewis's Woodpecker

My woodpecker loving son, Sam, directed me to the Mt. Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles to find my first Lewis's woodpecker. He said I would find several of them in and around a large dead tree. It is not a year-round resident of Southern California, but in the winter this woodpecker gets as far south as Southern California and the U.S. border with Mexico. It does bore into trees for insects, but also catches insects in the air during flight, which is what I saw them doing. They will also eat berries and nuts and store nuts in cracks and holes in wood to store for winter. 

It is beautiful, with a reddish breast, a pinkish belly, a red face, a black rump, a gray collar and upper breast and elsewhere is a blackish green.

Note how the gray-white chest blends into the bark of this tree. 

 

Illustration from Birds of the World. 

It gets its name from Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He saw one on Judy 20, 1805. He wrote, "I saw a black woodpecker (or crow) today...it is a distinct species of woodpecker; it has a long tail and flys a good deal like the jay bird". Andrew Wilson, working with skins that Lewis and Clark's expedition provided, described the species and and named it Lewis's woodpecker to honor the explorer. 

Range from Birds of the World.

It likes open forests, including higher-elevation burns, and requires snags for nesting. It has a sporadic distribution and is relatively uncommon as it has declined markedly since the 1960s. Reasons for the decline probably include loss of habitat, habitat degradation and the presence of pesticides. I'd never heard of this woodpecker until this year when Sam brought it to my attention. Still, Birds of the World notes 116,116 observations and 41,169 photos.