Woodpeckers

Good Morning! Are you ready for another beautiful day? 

The Osprey was enjoying breakfast when I saw her - sitting high and tearing that fish apart....head first.

The Eastern Phoebe made an appearance this morning - feeling quite comfortable on that branch.

We mused on how great it would be if all the birds would sit out in the open and let us take photos till we were done - LOL - that would be fun but that would also remove the challenge and satisfaction of a great shot along the way.
Look how meticulous the Eastern Phoebe is at cleaning up his feathers.

Then the bird of the day made its appearance - a Red-headed Woopecker! Good catch by Aaron as he watched it fly up on the Cabbage Palm Tree. That Red-headed Woodpecker was very good at playing "hide and seek" - only giving us small glimpses of his head and staying well behind full view.

I've over-exposed this photo so that the "Red-Headed" could be seen.

The Red-bellied seemed to like to hang out with the Red-headed as you can see - again, only a peek-a-boo from the Red-Headed.

We had a nice little group this morning at the Lighthouse....here are some of us.....my guestimate would be at around 25 birders in all, walking about the Lighthouse - all looking for migrants. Most of the migrants were seen flying way above us and the majority seemed to be Palm Warblers.

The Pileated wanted to be in the action too and made an appearance.

He got busy right away at finding ants, insects, etc.

Here is a frontal view for a change.

And here is the Pileated swinging about in the Palmetto berries....he made me think of Tarzan swinging on  a vine.

And here we have The Pileated and the Red-bellied. Today I saw three species of the Woodpecker Family - It turns out that there are 24 Woodpecker Species within the United States and 8 of them can be found in Florida.
As I review my personal list - I see that I have 3 species to go...Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Red-cockaded Woodpecker and the Northern Flicker. I look forward to see them.