This is a male Red-bellied Woodpecker, Melanerpes carolinus, hanging upside down on one of the suet feeders. You can't see the "red cap" which announces his maleness but I did see it so you will just have to take my word for it.
The detail in question is the fact that he has no feathers below his sternum. When I first saw the bare spot I thought, oh dear, poor guy, he's loosing his feathers.
Wait! Might he have a brood patch?
Yes indeed! Not only do Red-belly pairs share egg sitting responsibilities but they both loose their feathers in the "nest sitting egg contact area" and develop brood patches.
And if he didn't have a brood patch you would possibly be able to see why a Red-bellied Woodpecker has its name.
Now, when I was training and looking at Red-bellied
Woodpeckers in the bird skin drawers, none of them had the long thin
reddish area below "the waist" you can see in the photo below. I had
even read that there was a only slight diffused "reddish hue" on their underside which
could only be seen sporadically in the proper light.
Not true. There are dozens of photographs of the "red belly" these days.
Note the black and white pattern on her back. That pattern is called ladder back.
Above is an example of the red belly on a female. All I can figure is that that patch must fade to near nothing on a preserved bird.
There is just no substitute for live birds and modern photography to get the actual scoop on any number of things concerning wildlife. As well as leaving them in the wild for as full a life as they can muster.
Happy birding!
Donegal Browne
P. S. Don't worry I never killed anything. (Otherwise I would have had to do theatre full time.) By the time I was in training we used road kill to learn how to preserve and stuff bird skins.
Long time blog reader Karen Anne Kolling of Rhode Island snapped these pictures of a visitor to the The Gonzo Deck, sent them on, and asked,
"Is this a sapsucker of some kind? I wondered why the deck railing was
getting a little shredded :-) Sorry for the photo quality, I have
translucent decals on the windows, supposedly highly visible to birds
in their vision range."
Well Karen, I'd say you have a male Red-bellied Woodpecker.
Yes I know, his belly doesn't look the least red, but if he were a bird skin and you turned his tummy just the right way in the right light, you might see a bit of a blush. This is what comes of naming species from their skins as opposed to naming them from obvious characteristics in life.
Central Park has Red-bellies, one of which used to catch peanuts on the wing in his beak on a daily basis. I watched him a lot. And just once in the right angle of sun, I saw a slightly rosy flash off his abdomen.
And what might our guy be doing to your railing?
First off one might suspect an infestation of insects but your railing doesn't look much like an insect haven and as you ask if he's a Sapsucker, and you say your railing is beginning to look shredded, I suspect that he mut appear to be making holes, or at least attempting to make crevices of some kind with his beak.
Tis the season for "hatching". I don't know if you get them at your place, but Nuthatches cache seeds by poking them into small crevices and "hatching", hammering, them in with their beaks.
Some Woodpeckers also create cavities and then stash seeds in them as well, for later winter use when things get slim.
When you get a chance go out and take a close look at the cracks in the railing and let us know.
Then of course their is the mystery option. I've read that in certain cases woodpeckers busily whack away on houses or other man fashioned wood and even after stringent observation the observers never do figure out why they're doing it.
Other than... they just want to.
Donegal Browne
