There are two birds that look almost the same. Both are woodpeckers, but not related despite looking so much alike. The difference between them is size. The Hairy Woodpecker (as opposed to the Downy) is much bigger. The smaller woodpecker is actually quite truculent. I think “angry birds” was based on them.
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Categories: #Birds, #gallery, #Photography, Blackstone Valley, Wildlife, Woodpeckers
THE HUNGRY CREATURES 
GARDEN BIRDS AND SURVIVAL 
BIRD WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – STRIPES, SPOTS OR FRECKLES 
RETURN OF THE PILEATED WOODPECKER 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
I love little woodpeckers. Your downy woodpecker looks a lot like our lesser spotted woodpecker they’re almost the same size. The lesser spotted is like a sparrow dressed in bespoke tailored clothes ― black tie and dinnerjacket. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one in real life. We don’t have those giant red-crested headbanger woodpeckers like they seem to have everywhere else.
I think in Europe it’s just called a black woodpecker. Absolutely enormous birds. The American ones are pretty much “the same” only with more variegated black-and-white pattern, kind of like a punk-rocker headbanger in a tuxedo. I think they’re great birds.
Wouldn’t it be great to be a woodpecker!? They make their own homes and loads of other animals make use of woodpeckers’ homes years after the woodpeckers have flown away to peck at pastures new…!!…
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Our woodpeckers save a lot of trees. We had one tree — the old one near the deck — that was obviously infected with some kind of booring insect and ALL the woodpecker from huge to tiny were going at it.
Right now, because of the interminable rains we’ve been having, some kind of horrible disease has killed off most of our larger birds. All the little birds seem fine, but the big birds, including the big woodpeckers have vanished. I keep hearing from Cornell and other birding groups that they will come back, hopefully by next year, but I haven’t seen anything larger than a sparrow in more than a month. It’s some kind of fungus they think.
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Wonderful closeups
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And a very handsome young bird 🙂
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