Davis Mountains, West Texas. One does not think of West Texas in August as a place to go to get out of the heat, but is was 20 degrees cooler than Austin today, were is was 111. Our first morning, we were greeted with this young ladder backed woodpecker male excavating a new nest in an agave that was outside our room.
We could hear him drumming, but could not locate him, until we saw his tail visible in the hole, then his head and shower of chips, as he cleaned up his work. He kept this up all week, occasionally flying to a nearby power pole to call and advertise his availability and new digs.
D300 200-400 f/4 @ 380 mm
ISO 400 1/800 f/4.5 handheld -1/3 EV
PP in LR3 and PS 5, cropped, sharpened in ACR, selective lightening of dark shadow above the nest hole
Brilliant action shot , Mack !! On my monitos , the colours look a bit too saturated , and there are remnants of PP on the URC of the image on the edges of the tree .
Nice behaviour captured here...I got the pleasure to photograph something similar with a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker a couple of years ago...lots of fun to watch! Looks like you had warm early light to work with , but agree the saturation seems a bit strong. I'd also crop some off the top to eliminate the "busy" part of the tree up there. Vignetting a bit strong. Glad you got to cool down a bit from all the heat!