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.

Gilded Flicker

My prior two posts have dealt with woodpeckers I saw because my son, Sam, had directed me to where he'd found them. Prior to those woodpecker, in February of this year, he expressed an interest in going to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, where we have been previously several times, to see the Gila woodpecker and the gilded flicker. I'd seen the Gila woodpecker before (April 15, 2017), but I'd never even heard of the gilded woodpecker. Sam's interest in woodpeckers has opened up a whole world of woodpeckers I've known nothing about, and the gilded woodpecker is one of them. We discovered that the visitor center has put in a small warm spring and trees behind it which is a little oasis to attract birds. I mostly sat near the oasis waiting for birds to come, while Sam did a little of that, but also roamed beyond. He saw several gilded woodpeckers in his roaming and I saw one right as we were about ready to leave, standing on top of a large saguaro cactus near the spring. It later flew to another saguaro and I got some nice photos. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. The female does not have the red moustache. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World, with the red moustache. 

Yellow underwings is a key distinguishing feature of the gilded flicker from the northern flicker which has red underwings. The gilded flicker also has a rustier crown, narrower dorsal barring, a rounder breast patch and a wider black tip on the underside of the tail. The northern flicker also has a black moustache, instead of red and a red cap on the back of the head.  

This is an illustration of the northern flicker from Birds of the World. 

Wikipedia notes four subspecies and we saw the Mearns' gilded flicker (mearnsi) which is found in extreme southeastern California, to Arizona and northwestern Mexico. The population in the U.S. has declined by about 54% from 1970 to 2014 and not much is known about it. 

Range of the gilded flicker from Birds of the World. 

Pileated Woodpecker

Like my last post on Lewis's woodpecker, I owe my first view of a pileated woodpecker to my son Sam. He is an arborist and has been working with trees for years. Relatively recently he got interested in woodpeckers because of their close association with trees. He took a job in the Santa Cruz, California area and we visited him in March 2025. He was very interested in trying to find a pileated woodpecker, which I'd never heard of before, and we visited Portola Redwoods State Park during our visit and part of our conversation that day was about the desire to see a pileated woodpecker, which we did not see. In September, Sam texted me that he'd seen several pileated woodpeckers at the Bear Yuba Land Trust Woodpecker Reserve in Nevada City, California, northeast of Sacramento. I immediately made plans to drive to Nevada City with the goal of seeing and photographing a pileated woodpecker. 

To get to the Woodpecker Reserve, you take the Cascade Canal Trailhead off Gracie Road about 700' downhill from the intersection of Gracie Road and Banner Lava Cap Road. You follow a spur trail up, then turn left at the top of the hill along the Cascade Canal for .75 mile east on the Banner-Cascade trail. Then turn left on to the Orene Wetherall Trail. The Woodpecker Preserve is a 28 acre parcel of land. The trail is circular and about .6 of a mile one way. While there I took the Cascade Canal access three times  (1.5 miles round trip each) and walked the Orene Wetherall Trail four times (1.2 miles round trip each). After my third trip around the Orene Wetherall Trail I was very disappointed. Sam had seen three pileated woodpeckers there his first time on the trail. I was in Auburn, doing some birding there, and thinking of heading home. It was afternoon, not an ideal time for birding, but I decided I'd traveled all that way (over 500 miles) and should give it one more shot. So I drove over 25 miles back to Nevada City and did one more trip along the Cascade Canal Trail and then the Orene Wetherall Trail. To my great surprise and delight a female pileated woodpecker flew over my head and landed on the side of a tree not too far distant from me. I had time to take one photo before it flew and got one poor photo of it in flight. I was elated. 

The white wing feathers are visible in flight. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World. 

The pileated woodpecker is black with a red crest. A white line extends from the bill across the cheek and down the neck. In males, the line from the bill to the throat is red. It is the largest woodpecker in North America. Because of their large size and chisel-shaped bill, it is great at excavating cavities in trees that are used by many birds and animals for shelter and nesting, such as for boreal owls, wood ducks and the American marten. They also accelerate wood decomposition and nutrient recycling by breaking apart snags and logs. Their diet consists primarily of wood-dwelling ants, especially carpenter ants, and wood-boring beetle larvae. 

Plate 111 from Audubon's Birds of America showing the pileated woodpecker, from Wikipedia. 

Range map from Birds of the World. 

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. 

Reed Cormorant

The Reed cormorant, also known as the long-tailed cormorant, is found in sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of five small cormorants. It is: mainly black, glossed green, in the breeding season; the wing coverts are pale silvery-gray; it has a longish tail; a yellow bill; a red or yellow face patch; a red iris; and a short erectile shaggy crest on the forecrown in the breeding season. Non-breeding adults and juveniles are browner with a white belly.  

In the Okavanga Delta of Botswana in June 2018. 

Range from Birds of the World.

Purple Heron

I have a previous post on the purple heron (April 3, 2019), ssp. manilensis, which I saw in Sri Lanka. 

Illustration of ssp manilensis flying (and standing below) from Birds of the World.

Subsequently, I have seen a different subspecies, purpurea, the nominate subspecies, in both Portugal, in the Tagus Estuary area, in June of 2022, and in the Mabamba Swamp in Uganda, west of Entebbe on Lake Victoria, in July of 2025. 

This purple heron is one of several we saw in the Tagus Estuary. 

This is the purple heron we saw in the Mabamba Swamp.

Illustration of purpurea from Birds of the world, flying (and standing below), from Birds of the World.

The subspecies are differentiated by the extent of black streaking on the neck. Manilensis is paler and grayer above and darker below, and the black spots on the throat are more broken or even missing, and it has whiter chest plumes.