Golden-fronted woodpecker

Golden-fronted woodpecker as photographed in El Salvador.

It's rare to see a woodpecker taking such a keen interest in flowers.  And yet, here I was, in El Salvador, visiting an ancient Mayan temple, when an unfamiliar bird made its appearance.

The first thing I noticed was its striped back - distinctly black with thin broken white stripes on the background.  The next thing that hit me was the shape of the beak and head.  You get familiar with bird types, and this one definitely was a woodpecker.  The wierd thing was that it seemed to be feeding on flowers.

Not the actual blooms themselves, but perhaps nectar, or associated insects.  Some birds, like sapsuckers, will drill small holes in trees to take the leaking sap and any insects that get caught up in it.  I suspect it was similar with this bird; the nectar would help with dehydration, the sugars with energy, and the bugs with protein.

It flitted from bloom to bloom, always arriving on top and disappearing momentarily as it dove into them.  It was up high in a large tree filled with orange flowers that had passed their peak recently.  All my shots were taken at a significant angle.

An interesting fact about this woodpecker is that it interbreeds with a few other species.  This tends to occur only where the range overlaps between species, and I don't have data at this moment about the viability or ability of the offspring to reproduce.  The species involved are the Gila and Red-bellied woodpeckers.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com