Another couple of sad photos taken through the window with dust, UV film and half inch thick glass causing distortion. Not to mention the bird was pecking in the bark like a machine and most of my pictures were a blur. I've done a little color correction to compensate.
I think we have a red-naped supsucker here. I was reading how sapsuckers make wells in the bark for extracting sap and came upon this mention of hummingbirds and bluebirds being associated with them. We are seeing hummers and bluebirds now, too. Maybe it is no coincidence.
Other species make use of sapsucker wells to
supplement their food intake with sap or with
insects attracted to the sap. Rufous Hummingbirds
(Selasphorus rufus), for example, appear to be closely
associated, ecologically, with both Red-breasted
and Red-naped sapsuckers; they place their nests
near sap wells, follow sapsuckers in their daily
movements, and may even time their migration to
coincide with that of sapsuckers so they can feed off
the sap wells. In addition, sapsuckers excavate nest
cavities that often provide nesting or roost sites for
other species of birds (for example, Mountain Blue
birds [Sialiacurrucoides]), and even some mammals
(for example, northern flying squirrel [Glaucomys
sabrinus]) that cannot excavate their own.
This bird lacks the black breast band of the red-naped sapsucker, but perhaps it's in an intermediate plumage phase. It just doesn't look like anything else to me.
