Woodpeckers!

Jess and I were talking about the birds we get at our feeders, and she turned that into an entry about her favorite bird, the black-capped chickadee. Good thinking.

Just talking about backyard birds (or my list of 'favorites' gets a bit... lengthy), mine would be the downy woodpecker.



They're not the biggest or most spectacular of the woodpeckers, but they're the ones most people in North America are likely to see. Close as I am to the city, I see them regularly at my suet feeder; I've seen three or four at once in my backyard. They're extremely agile, even upside-down on a tree branch, and have a very striking color pattern to them, so they're always interesting to watch.

They're not just aesthetically interesting, though. For one, they often associate with birds of other species, so if you see a downy, there's probably other birds nearby as well. Over the winter, I often saw one traveling with about a dozen dark-eyed juncos. They're also important insectivores; looking for a good picture of one, I saw brief references to a couple studies that show downies being major predators of insect species that damage lumber and orchard trees.

Plus, like other woodpeckers, they have a simple adaptation that allows a male and female to hunt in the same place without limiting each other's food supply: the males are larger and can prey on insects living deeper in the wood, while the females generally prey on insects living under the bark.

So, they look neat, they act neat, they're useful to have around, and they're common enough to see but unusual enough to notice. That's why I like them.