Juvenile woodpeckers

I look forward to the first week of June every year because it sees the arrival of newly-fledged woodpeckers in the garden.  This year I saw the first on 31st May but it has been difficult to get good photos, mainly because of the change in the weather making it dark under the trees.  I usually hear them first as they sit high in the trees calling for food while their parents collect it from the feeders.  Soon they are confident enough to come a bit nearer but they don't sit still, flitting off to a different spot just when I have the camera nicely lined up.  Within a couple of days they can feed themselves and the parents leave them to it.

I set up the (open) sitting room window as a hide with a photogenic old fence post outside and spent some time trying to get a few photos and videos.  The parents and the youngsters on their own are easy but getting them together and feeding is more of a challenge.  Here is a young bird being typically unto-operative, both with me and with its mother.

After several failed attempts the first success was a photo taken through the hinge of the window, not where I had hoped they would be at all.

Many times a fledgling would sit on the fence post but jump up into the tree before the parent brought the food.

Then eventually I got what I wanted.  A parent and a fledgling on the fence post together.

I have also been trying a few videos, partly because I already have plenty of photos and because video gives more insight into behaviour.  Here is a first attempt with the birds on the log feeder.  It caught me by surprise before I was properly set up - the video is too closely cropped, and is wobbly because I was holding the camera, and the crunching noise is from the polystyrene balls in the bean bag, and the fledgling was round the back of the feeder - but you can see the potential.

Here is a fledgling bouncing up and down with excitement but of course it flew up into a tree before the food arrived.

This is a bit better with feeding on the fence post.  Three examples although the first is still a bit wobbly and crunchy.

 

In the next video an adult bird brought food from the peanut feeder but then realised there were a few peanuts in the top of the post (I wonder how they got there?).  So it decided to use them but chopped them up before handing them over, interesting behaviour as it was making sure the food wasn't too big for the youngster to swallow.  The whole episode lasted more than five minutes but I have edited it down to just over one.

 

The adult birds have a pecking order - somehow a new arrival can tell whether to attack or to wait its turn and sometimes the bird on the feeder will leave as soon as it sees a more dominant bird has arrived.  The adults aren't too keen on other youngsters either.  This clip is another on the log feeder - an adult male gives way to a more dominant bird, leaving its fledgling behind, and the new bird (a female) realises the youngster is there and chases it away.

Video is harder than it looks.  There is usually a steady arrival of new fledglings over the first couple of weeks of June because not all broods fledge at the same time, so if the weather is better in the next day or two I may be able to get a bit more practice.  Within the next week all the youngsters will be able to feed themselves and there will be less excitement in the video and photography.

I have just noticed it is six years to the day since my first post on this blog.  In that time there have been 1169 posts (including this one), and the first one was on newly-fledged great spotted woodpeckers.