It was Woodpecker Week these last few days!

The Front Range has three different common types of woodpecker, and at least one of each kind came tapping around our neighborhood.

First up: The bird every homeowner loves to hate — Northern Flickers. This male demonstrates why.

This is the red-shafted variety of Northern Flicker. Both sexes of red-shafted Flickers have reddish-orange flight feathers visible in flight. The males have red mustaches, otherwise the sexes look the same. They are very common in our neighborhood.

Later on the same walk, we saw two male Downy Woodpeckers, trying to decide who’s territory it was. Downys are a little bigger than sparrows, but much more reclusive. The males have red patches on the back of their heads, otherwise the sexes look the same.

Later another (or maybe one of the two we saw before — who knows?) showed up at our house feeder and carefully ate some millet.

Look at how pointed his beak is! Birds of the World says it “is shorter than the distance from the base of the bill to the back of the head”. True. And he has those bristly little feathers over his beak.

Compare the Downy Woodpecker with the Hairy Woodpecker, below. I don’t have anything in these pictures for scale, so you’ll have to take my word for it that the Hairy is bigger. Birds of the Worlds says that the feathers of the white stripe on their lower back are “Downy”, in contrast to the similar, but more hairlike feathers on the lower back of the Hairy Woodpecker. And you can see that Hairys beak is longer, heavier and blunter.

Male Hairys have red patches on the backs of their heads, otherwise the sexes look the same. Hairys are usually more common around our feeder, so it will be interesting to see which we see more often as the spring progresses.