In two previous posts, we’ve been talking about telling Hairy Woodpeckers from Downy Woodpeckers. This story shows why we like to look at more than one field mark to identify a bird. Especially when there are two species that look a lot alike.
Here’s a woodpecker that needs more than one glance to identify. The bill looks pretty long, and if that were the only thing we had to go on, we might conceivably guess this was a Hairy Woodpecker.
But hold on a second. He has a single, undivided red spot on the back of his head. That is what we expect from a Downy Woodpecker.
AND the outer edges of his tail are not pure white. They have black spots on them. That’s another field mark of a Downy, and one of the more certain ones. So now we’re thinking it’s probably a Downy.
Here’s another photo of the same bird, that gives us a better look at the bill. Now we can see that it is less than half the width of the head. The tuft at the base of the bill is pretty developed, too. Also, now we can see the black spots on the tail more clearly.
He is, without doubt, a rather lovely male Downy Woodpecker.
Here are those previous posts, by the way:
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Thank you for this! We get these at our feeders, and I have never been able to distinguish them.