Lewis’s Woodpecker in the Preserve
Guided Hike report from Jeanie Anderson.
Our Preserve is currently graced by a beautiful feathered visitor from the Pacific Northwest…the Lewis’s Woodpecker. Named for Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark, the Lewis’s Woodpecker was reported on Nov. 24th on eBird. When I was preparing my bird hike for Sat, Nov. 27th, I found the report and planned our outing around finding this rare bird.
If you go to the Ranch House and keep walking west past the fenced in orchard, at the far end of the field, you will find a very large sycamore tree. Our visiting bird has made this his home base for now. S/He has been seen in cavities, and working on “home improvements” as well as stashing acorns from the nearby Live Oak trees. When you visit, look high up in the branches for a bird with a distinctive pink belly, light neck band, and dark greenish-black shiny head, back and wings. Watch a while from a distance, and you may see that s/he has the foraging habits of a flycatcher, capturing insects on the wing… quite unusual for a woodpecker.
Unlike most woodpeckers, Lewis’s does not build their own nest cavities, but find existing ones built by other woodpeckers. Interestingly,our resident Acorn Woodpeckers are in the same Genus as the Lewis’s. Acorns are Melanerpes formicivorus and Lewis’s are Melanerpes lewis… making them cousins.
