The Birders Report

Black-backed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) Male photos by Larry Jordan

I arrived at Lassen Volcanic National Park around 7:00 a.m. It was a cool 48 degrees. I had taken the short drive to the park to search for a family of American Dippers sighted near the visitor center by a fellow birder a few days before. What I found was more than I could possibly hope for.

I parked where I nearly always begin my day at Lassen Park,  at the first turn out about 100 yards beyond the northern park entrance ranger station off highway 44. As I got out of my car, about fifty feet from Manzanita Lake, I heard the loud drumming of a woodpecker. Click on photos for full sized images.

I didn’t know what species of woodpecker it was, but I knew it was just in the clearing on the other side of the road. I grabbed my bins, camera and camcorder and headed toward the hollow drumbeat. If not for the drumming, I would probably not have seen the Black-backed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus), listed by authors of some field guides as “scarce,” by others as “uncommon to rare.”

Note how well camouflaged this bird is atop a snag in its natural habitat of burned coniferous forest.

I approached carefully as I listened to the ever growing sound of the drumming, not wanting to flush a bird I had only seen once before.

Black-backed Woodpeckers are non-migratory, although there have been documented intermittent irruptions of the species outside their normal range. Some of these irruptions have been attributed to a lack of wood-boring insect prey on their normal range or to overpopulation following an insect outbreak¹.

Either way, they are usually due to exploitation of wood-boring beetle larvae, their primary food. Range map courtesy of South Dakota Birds and Birding.

The Black-backed Woodpecker and its cousin the Three-toed Woodpecker are the only North American land birds with three toes instead of the usual four.

Since their primary food is wood-boring insect larvae, these woodpeckers have adapted skulls that are highly adapted for pounding, as you probably noticed in the video 😉

Drumming is used by woodpeckers to attract a mate or declare a territory. Since drumming is normally used to communicate over long distances, woodpeckers use surfaces with good acoustic properties like hollow branches or trunks to pound on.

Both the male and female Black-backed Woodpecker drum, and most frequently in the Spring, to attract a mate.

I’m not sure why this guy was drumming but as you saw in the video, he would drum and then appear to be listening for a return signal?

Apparently it is also common for Black-backed Woodpeckers to stretch and preen between drumming episodes.

Whenever I visit Lassen Volcanic National Park, I always search for nesting woodpeckers. A few years ago my friend Jim Arnold photographed a nesting Black-backed Woodpecker in the park at Hat Lake. You can see his excellent photo of the nestling here.

Stay tuned for photos of the American Dippers (or Water Ouzels as I like to call them) and the Brown Creepers I saw later that day in upcoming posts.

If you want to see more great bird photos from around the world, check out World Bird Wednesday!

References: ¹Birds of North America Online

Western Bluebird (Sialia Mexicana) photo by Larry Jordan

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Please check out my latest West Coast Beat Writer post “Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Bluebirds Fly” over at 10000 Birds. It includes a video I shot of the Western Bluebird chicks leaving the nest and several photos of juvenile Western Bluebirds.

It also includes this popular rendition of the song by “IZ,” the late Israel Ka?ano?i Kamakawiwo?ole. Enjoy!

Ash-throated Flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens) photos by Larry Jordan

It had rained heavily most of the night so I wasn’t surprised to see a soaked Ash-throated Flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens) this morning. According to my nest box monitoring records, it was seventeen days after hatching and the nestlings should be ready to fledge (click on photos for full sized images).

It was shortly after sunrise (note the sunrise in the eye of the bird in the first image) and I have learned over the years that nestlings are usually urged to fledge in the morning. It gives the adults the most daylight hours to get the youngsters acquainted with the real world out there. So I thought I would try to document the momentous occasion.

It began with the adult birds bringing insects to the nestlings in the nest box. But they weren’t just delivering the food and going out to bring more. They were perching on nearby branches with tasty morsels of all kinds and calling to the little ones in the nest.

They would flutter in front of the entrance to the nest box and show the insect to the chicks and then perch nearby and call to them.

The nestling rarely stuck its head out of the entrance but it was chirping almost continuously.

Here’s a shot of mom stopping to check me out shortly after making a delivery.

Now I know that there were three nestlings in this box (as well as an unhatched egg) because I took a photograph of them when they were seven days old.

But as you will see in the video at the end of this post, this appears to be the last Ash-throated Flycatcher on my Bluebird Trail this year. The other two nestlings must have fledged earlier in the morning or the day before.

I’m glad I caught him or her leaving the nest and I hope to see all of them nearby being fed more grasshoppers by their parents as they learn to catch their own prey.

For more great bird photos from around the world you have to check out World Bird Wednesday!