Three shots of downy woodpeckers -- I spotted this family when I came home
from running errands today. In the first two shots the smaller bird is
feeding the larger one. The third shot (a rather poor/unsharp image) shows
the male with his red head.

I speculate that the smaller bird is a mother feeding her post-hatchling son
(the large size suggests a male bird, though he doesn't have the red head
yet.) Father was just hanging around.

Shot #1 was taken about 2 hours before numbers 2 & 3 -- these birds are
devilishly difficult to see on the bark of the tree but once I tuned into
them I realized that they were coming and going pretty regularly.

For photography nuts -- the first shot was taken with a Pentax PZ-70 and SMC
80-320mm zoom (at 320), handheld at close range (less than 20 feet.) Shots
2 and 3 were taken with the PZ-70 with a Tokina ATX-400mm and an ancient
(but good!) Kiron 2x teleconverter (effectively 800mm) from about 70 feet
(tripod mounted, of course.)

--
Mark Cassino
Kalamazoo, MI
cassino@net-link.net
http://www.net-link.net/~cassino
Images Of Common Birds & Plants
Fifth Update: May 16, 1998
Now is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?