I was sitting at the computer and glanced out into the yard. I saw a woodpecker and first dismissed it as a hairy, but almost immediately decided the gizz was off, so I looked closer. It was silently hammering on the side of a grand old maple tree in my woody backyard. It was brownish mottled on the belly and patterned black and white on the back. It's bill was straight and sharply pointed, very crisp to my eyes. And then I began to see some reddish blush on the throat and top of head. I don't see these woodpeckers very often so this was exciting. And even better, this bird stayed pretty much in the same spot on the same tree for hours.
Maria and Richard came and stayed overnight after we had a party at Tom and Eunice's. A YB sapsucker would be life bird for Maria but I didn't expect it to still be around the following day. There was a lot of wind in the night, lots of small branches and twigs all over and a group of neighbors' mailboxes were all askew due to either the wind or vandalism. We were watching the reconstruction at the mailbox scene when I remembered the sapsucker, looked out at the maple tree and it was there! So Maria got a good look at it.
Again, amazingly, this bird stayed in that same spot nearly the whole day. While at the computer, I need to look through a window and screen, and it was overcast today and the backyard is shady, so it looked like a clump of leaf litter hanging on the tree. Maria couldn't even see it for about 15 seconds as it was camouflaged somewhat. But when we looked closer and from a better window, it was very obvious. The white vertical "racing strip" and a suggestion of yellow belly, black and white head, with the above-menioned beginnings of red, thereby identifying this as an immature male.
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