Woodpecker Playing Dead

[Chuck Pavlick]

This is my first post in Avian.
I never seen a red bellied woodpecker act like this. I do think his wing was injured. He seemed to fly ok but when he would stop he would peck at his wing. I caught him in a few other poses but this was when he started to play dead or take a nap.
Taken with a Canon 7d 70-200 f4 w/1.4 extender 1/640s f/8 ISO 800 280 mm
Thanks for looking.
Chuck

http://www.pbase.com/hobbynaut/image/127473716/large.jpg

[Randy Stout]

Chuck:

Welcome to Avian!

Interesting behaviour, one that I haven't seen before.

It is a little hard to figure out what is going on in the image, so your background info was helpful.

The light was rather harsh here, bright and overhead, so it makes for a high contrast image. The exposure is pretty good under these circumstances. The hand of man shown by the large board for a perch is a bit distracting.

If the image quality will allow, I would crop much tighter to down play the impact of that board. The bird is a little soft looking, so the image might not tolerate a big crop.

Unusual behaviour captured, look forward to more.

Cheers

Randy

[Chuck Pavlick]

Randy,
Thanks for your comments. The purpose of this image was to show off the different behavior. This was the only sunny spot on the boardwalk and the first time that a woodpecker ever landed on the hand railing. He was at least 100 feet away and the image has been cropped quite a bit. I didn't have much time to react so this is the best i can do.
Chuck

[Randy Stout]

Chuck:

When something interesting shows up, you push the button, cause if you wait to check all your settings, you often will get nothing. After I get a couple in the can, then if time allows I will start tweaking my settings. With practice, the time delay gets shorter and shorter, and you learn to anticipate action a bit, but I would have done the same thing as you, taken this picture.:S3:

Cheers

Randy

[Satish Ranadive]

Beautiful shot of behavior.Never seen before.

[Ramon M. Casares]

Nice natural behaviour, I believe he is sun bathing, really :)

[Chuck Pavlick]

Playing dead sounded a little more intriguing. Thanks for looking.

[Gene Potter]

Playing dead certainlysounds more intriguing, but I agree with Ramon. I have seen this type behaviorfrom a woodpecker just recently. Nice capture of decisive moment despite thedistance.