Red-Naped Sapsucker

[Mark Schmitt]

A migrant bird during the winter which comes into the Kern River Valley area from the Rocky Mnt area. It's a welcome addition the Red-breasted sapsucker; which is the more endemic bird of the area. I considered taking out the broken branch but descided it stay
The drillings are the interesting part of the trunk. If you look you'll notice that some of them are deeper than others, and that some are round and others are more rectangular. The shapes of the drillings indicate that the bird is exploiting different tissue layers of the cambium to extract the sap. It depends on the time of the year; winter months will mean deeper drilling and more rectangular cavities. This is also a good time to get images of humming birds, as they will exploit the drillings as well.

A great deal of PP went into this: BG was promoted to layer and blurred; it was just a jumble of branches and twigs: dodge and burn in the lighter areas of the trunk: selective "pre-sharpenning" using high pass filter: levels for global contrast: channel mix for selective saturation.

EXIF
Canon 30D
Canon: EF 500 IS L + 1.4 T/C (effective focal length 700mm)
Metering: pattern
ISO: 500
Exp: 1/800 @ f 5.6, + .66 exp comp: ambient light: monopod
White bal: custom 5300 K

Feel free ;)

[Ken Silagy]

Without seeing a larger photo it looks to me to be an immature yellow belly male sapsucker. Or first year bird. Just a thought. I took a photo very much like this about a week ago as they are moving north.