Thursday, May 5, 2011

Battling Woodpeckers 2

Yeah, I know, these pictures are not very good. I even had to fix up two of them a little bit. what they are really here for though is to show you the further battle of these two woodpeckers. You can see by the ruffled feathers of the one on the left that it was pretty worked up about something.

These birds flew away from the walking trail about twenty feet to this tree where they continued their fight. They chased each other around this tree back and forth. The pictures were very hard for me to get because I was looking right into the Sun. It needed to be done because this was a very exciting event.

This second one shows the other bird a little better. She doesn't seem to be quite as ruffled up as the other one, but in the next few pictures both of them look a little rough. I wish I knew what they were fighting over.

There are woodpeckers all over this forest, and they all have homes all through here too. It may have been a dispute over territory. I've read that even males and females will fight over food, even when there's plenty. These appear to be both female.

I had a bit better position here. The birds were completely ignoring me so I soon began to wonder if they might also be ignoring any predator that might come along. There are plenty of those in this forest as well. It's not a safe place for two fighting birds.

Here they are both ruffled up just a bit. And what is it I began to hear in the distance? It's the call of a hawk! I hoped these birds would decide to break off their fight and listen to the approaching danger. Hawks love this forest as much as I do. Plenty of small animals. And this hawk sounded like a big one.

I began to suspect that maybe the birds were hiding from the hawk instead of fighting, but then I remembered their fight in the air when I first saw them. The hawk was circling very close now to this small forest. The birds quickly disappeared, and I had more adventures to discover. I wondered what I might see next.


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12 comments:

  1. Silly woodpeckers, there are plenty of trees around! In the last two photos, they seem to get along!

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  2. When they are leary of predators they stay out of the direct light and on the shady side of the tree it seems.

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  3. I guess the woodpeckers had the sense to forego their disagreement when imminent danger is on the horizon!! Smart birds!

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  4. well I was glad to hear they broke up their dispute before the hawk showed up

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  5. Birds, silly birds, behave like us.

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  6. I haven't seen this happen before either

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  7. I guess they were at least bright enough to steer clear of the hawk!

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  8. I think watching birds is more interesting/entertaining than watching TV. This is a very interesting report!

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  9. There is drama in these photographs. Such intensity! Wow!

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  10. What a great thing to witness!!

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  11. Great little post. It must be amazing down there.

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  12. This has been a very interesting adventure. I wonder what they were so riled about.

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