8/6/2023 0 Comments Rehab acorn woodpecker![]() She returned to the birch, back to the feeder, and then flew to the woods on the other side of the road. Then she flew to the spruce trees along Russell Stewart’s driveway where I took a lot of photos. While I was there, the bird flew to the feeder for some sunflower seeds. The red crown on females is separated from the white face by a black forehead. I photographed this male at the feeding station at Cave Creek Lodge in southeastern Arizona in 2013. The red crown on males extends all the way to this patch. All Acorn Woodpeckers have a large white face patch. He had done his homework, explaining that although this bird had a large red spot on the crown, she was a female. When I got there, the bird was in a birch tree in his yard, and a bunch of birders were standing right next to his porch, with Russell Stewart himself making sure everyone saw it. Most homeowners are pretty polite to birders in return, but Russell Stewart went far, far beyond mere politeness. The vast majority of birders are very respectful toward homeowners hosting a rare bird, and I’m happy to say that the ones who turned up at Russell Stewart’s lived up to that reputation for politeness. I couldn’t get away that day or the next, but by the morning of July 5 when I finally got there with my friend Paula Lozano, at least 100 birders had descended upon Russell Stewart’s house. He warned Russell Stewart that a lot of other birders were likely to turn up, and sure enough! Kim is the first birder ever to have seen more than 400 species in Minnesota and leads the state in birds seen. In less than an hour, Kim Eckert turned up at his place to look for it. But the day after he first noticed it, Russell Stewart got good enough photos to confirm his identification, and appreciating just how extraordinary it was for an Acorn Woodpecker to appear in the state, he signed up for eBird just to report it. If Russell Stewart's Acorn Woodpecker followed that pattern, we’d probably never know that it had appeared in Minnesota at all. Those birds weren’t what birders call "chasable"-they were seen only a single day each, so birders who might have tried to find them after that one day wouldn't have succeeded. There are two previous records of Acorn Woodpeckers in Minnesota: one appeared at Crow Wing State Park near Brainerd on November 9, 2009, and one at a house in Detroit Lakes on September 14, 2016. ![]() But these birds hardly migrate to Minnesota-they head south, probably to Mexico’s Sierra Madre.īirds have wings and each individual has some agency over its own life, so individual migratory and even non-migratory birds occasionally turn up well out of range. Acorn Woodpeckers are considered non-migratory except for one population near the Huachuca Mountains of southeastern Arizona, where not enough acorns grow each year to provide a big enough winter supply for each community. I’ve seen Acorn Woodpeckers many times, mostly in California and Arizona, but also in New Mexico and at Big Bend National Park in Texas, and in Mexico and Costa Rica, but until Russell Stewart’s bird turned up, I’d never seen one outside the species’ normal range. Because of these unique habits and because several Acorn Woodpecker communities are conveniently located near California universities and colleges, a great many researchers have pretty thoroughly studied the species.Īcorn Woodpeckers have two distinct ranges in the United States: in western-most Oregon and much of California, and in eastern Arizona, western New Mexico, and a bit of southwestern Texas. About 1– 4 females and 1– 8 males are breeders, and 1–10 other birds, related to the breeders, are helpers. A single nesting community involves two cohorts: multiple related females in one and multiple related males in the other. (Unless a caption says otherwise, all the photos on this post were taken of Russell Stewart's Acorn Woodpecker.) ![]() I took this photo in southern California. Each bird belongs to a community, searching for and storing food in communal granaries that the entire community shares. But unlike those relatives, the Acorn Woodpecker lives communally. The Acorn Woodpecker is a fascinating bird with a clown-like face belonging to the same genus, Melanerpes, as our Red-bellied and Red-headed Woodpeckers. The one species that did match belongs more than 1,200 miles from his Carlton County home: an Acorn Woodpecker! He looked through his field guide and nothing that could be found in Minnesota matched it. On July 2, Russell Stewart was looking out at his feeder when what to his wondering eyes should appear but a strikingly beautiful woodpecker that he didn’t recognize.
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