We see quite a few of these little woodpeckers (little compared to the Pileated, at least) at our backyard feeders. They like the suet blocks, but lately we mostly see them on the seed feeder.
A lot of smaller birds came and went while this guy was feeding. He ignored them, occasionally glancing at some of the larger birds. I’ve noticed that, generally, woodpeckers are pretty bold and do not startle easily when other birds visit while they are feeding.
Technical info: Shot with my most reliable and flexible bird setup: Sony a7R IV and Canon 300mm f/2.8 lens (this time with 1.4x extender, so 420mm f/4). I shot at intentionally high ISO in order to have 1/1000th second exposures to freeze the motion of the birds (even in flight, for the most part, although with some birds you need 1/2000th to get a clean shot in flight). ISO was set to auto, aperture f/5, and at 1/1000th second, the sun was bright enough that the camera used ISO 100 (base, so clean and no noticeable noise).
Note: I use a simple trick to keep ISO from rising too high, and it was in play for all of my bird shots today. I set the exposure compensation to 1.3 stops, so in effect under-exposing all of the shots by more than a stop. The camera has good dynamic range, so I knew that I could easily recover the highlights. The small excess noise this creates in the highlights is worth it, as the overall noise in the image from the lower ISO setting is highly beneficial.
This did not cause the ‘white’ portions of the feathers to be brown; at least around here, the Hairy Woodpeckers consistently have tan or light brown feathers, with white reserved for wing patches and the top and back of the head.
How do I know this is a Hairy? The giveaway is the size of the beak in relation to the head. The Hairy and the Downy are similar, but the Downy has a significantly smaller beak.
I was surprised that he could brace himself satisfactorily with his tail so severely crooked against the bottom of the feeder. The suet feeder has a tail brace on it, but apparently it’s not exactly a critical feature. :)
I suspect he was collecting food for the nest; a few minutes later, he had a beakful:
Which he hung on to even when other birds visited: