Out on a limb.


After a 3 week absence the red-headed woodpeckers are coming back to our yard and the empty lot next door.


I find them striking in their simplicity,red, black and white.

Melanerpes erythrocephalus

The Red-headed Woodpecker is one of only four North American woodpeckers known to store food, and it is the only one known to cover the stored food with wood or bark. It hides insects and seeds in cracks in wood, under bark, in fenceposts, and under roof shingles. Grasshoppers are regularly stored alive, but wedged into crevices so tightly that they cannot escape.

Pleistocene-age fossils of Red-headed Woodpeckers—up to 2 million years old—have been unearthed in Florida, Virginia, and Illinois.

source - Cornell Lab of Ornithology

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