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Lewis's Woodpecker, Melanerpes lewis |
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Lewis's Woodpecker is quite a rarity in the Santa Cruz Mountain foothills, so this one spending the winter of 2007-08 at Arastradero Preserve, behind the Stanford campus, was a treat. Thanks to Gayle Edwards, who originally found the bird. Picture above from November, left from February. |
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Lewis's Woodpeckers, never an easy bird to see, are regular nesters on Smithneck Road, beyond Loyalton in Sierra Valley. On July 2, 2007, I was there in mid-morning to see some drama. When I arrived, two adults were feeding two nestlings -- left, an adult just landed, before going to the nest. (They fed the nestlings mainly with food previously stored in a small cavity near the nest hole.) |
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After watching the adults feed their young in the nest for some time, I was startled to see one of the nestlings suddenly emerge. Here it is, facing the brave new world, about ten seconds after it first left the nest. |
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Less than a minute after the young bird left the nest, one of the adults flew down to feed it, maybe with some element of reward, in sight of the single young bird remaining in the nest. |
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The new fledgling proceeding to climb several feet up the nest tree, and then it took its first flight, a few feet to this smaller neighboring snag -- which it then climbed to the top, as shown here. A few seconds after this the fledgling flew down into the shrubbery and out of my sight. |
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The adults continued feeding the remaining young bird left in the nest. |
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The remaining pictures show adults coming to a nest in June of 2006 and 2008, not far from the one shown above in 2007. |
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