Woodpecker caching acorns is in full swing at Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge. The acorns were dropping on November 5, and the woodpeckers were getting to them before they fell. I was walking a service road around 9 in the morning, and the birds kept crossing the road over my head.
Woodpecker Caching Acorns, One Trip At A Time
A woodpecker would fly across the road to an oak tree and stay only a few seconds. Then it would fly back across the road to a dead tree, carrying an acorn in its beak.
Once I saw that a few times, it dawned on me. The birds were grabbing acorns in the oaks and wedging them into cracks in the dead trees.
Red-headed Woodpeckers are well known for this. They cache acorns, beechnuts, and other hard mast in natural cracks, old woodpecker holes, fence posts, and even utility poles. They wedge food tight into a crack and hammer it in place.
A 200-800mm Lens Against A Very Fast Bird
I started photographing the flights as the birds came over with acorns. Luck was with me on the light. The oaks stood west of the road, so the sun sat behind me and lit the birds as they crossed.
The lens was the hard part. My Canon RF 200-800mm is not ideal for small birds in flight. At 800mm I kept losing the birds before I ever found them in the viewfinder. I backed off to 600mm to find them easier, hoping to zoom back out to 800 once I had one framed. That did not work well. The flights were short, the birds were fast, and I had only a few seconds to find one, track it, and shoot. The R5 Mark II and that lens are heavy together, and my arms got tired.
I never did photograph the stashing itself. The light on the dead-tree side of the road was bad, and those trees have lost their bark. They are nearly white, and white trees in bright sun make a poor picture.
Hundreds Of Frames, A Handful Of Keepers
I took hundreds of photos that morning. Back home at the computer, I kept only a handful. Photographing birds that fast is hard work, and I will not pretend otherwise. It was fun, though. My favorite of the bunch is the flight shot above.
If you want to see the stashing end of this, I got that this past spring and wrote it up in Red-headed Woodpecker Caching a Nut at Sequoyah NWR. Same refuge, same busy birds.
What a beautiful bird and photo.