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Confirm ID Request - Ladder-backed Woodpecker? Round Rock, TX, US (1 Viewer)

erisian.pope

very amateur
The detail that is throwing me off is the lack of markings on the face. But as you see on the back, the banding covers the entire back so I don't think this is a down, and the head has the black on the crown and in the middle of the nape of the neck, so I guess it's not red-bellied or golden-fronted.

Can anyone confirm?

Could the plain face suggest that it's a juvenile?

As always, thank you for your help!
 

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Certainly looks good for Ladderbacked! The only other possible 'range' candidate with 'continuous' barring on the back would be Red Cockaded. According to Sibley this would have a 'deep' first nape bar, which your bird does not appear to have.

cheers
 
Sorry....I don't know! other than your original suggestion is probably correct ie a juvenille.

perhaps wiser counsels will prevail?
 
These look like two different birds to me - the first looks like a Melanerpes species and clearly isn't Ladder-backed but the second could well be one.
 
I hadn't thought of that. I took the first picture first and the bird was aware of me so it hopped to the back side of the tree and I lost sight of it. I circled the pond slowly and it's a decent sized pond and I took the second photo when I got back to the original area. The birds (assuming they are different birds) were in neighboring trees, only a few feet apart and only a few minutes apart. Would two birds of different genera be comfortable neighbors or are the birds territorial?

EDIT: I checked and the pictures were taken ~20 minutes apart.
 
I hadn't thought of that. I took the first picture first and the bird was aware of me so it hopped to the back side of the tree and I lost sight of it. I circled the pond slowly and it's a decent sized pond and I took the second photo when I got back to the original area. The birds (assuming they are different birds) were in neighboring trees, only a few feet apart and only a few minutes apart. Would two birds of different genera be comfortable neighbors or are the birds territorial?

EDIT: I checked and the pictures were taken ~20 minutes apart.

I think they're pretty clearly different birds. I once saw five species of woodpecker in the same tree over just a few minutes in Colorado so I reckon it's quite possible to have both woodpeckers together here.

I'd favour the first bird being Golden-fronted Woodpecker, as I get a hint of yellow on the nape.
 
No 1 looks to me like a female or juvenile Golden-fronted WP (Melanerpes aurifrons) as Andrew suggested. No 2 is a Ladderback female. You can see the black cap and just a hint of the facial markings in this view from behind.

Will
 
Update! I saw the same bird again today (same trees, and same face as you can see in the pictures) and got some slightly more informative pictures. I am pretty sure, as Andrew suggested, that this is a Golden-Fronted Woodpecker.

Does anyone agree or disagree?

I included the picture of it annoyed-ly flying away from me for the humor. I am not the stealthiest birdwatcher. I'll make sure to not harass this bird for a while and let it recover.
 

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I have to say to Andrew and Will, you each have a great eye. My photos are never spectacular and I'm amazed that you saw the hue on the nape at all from yesterday's photos. Thank you, and consider me utterly impressed.
 
I have to say to Andrew and Will, you each have a great eye. My photos are never spectacular and I'm amazed that you saw the hue on the nape at all from yesterday's photos. Thank you, and consider me utterly impressed.

In a funny kind of way, it's more that I couldn't see any clear hue on the nape on the picture from yesterday. I think the red on the nape of Red-bellied Woodpecker would have stood out more. I got a vague hint of yellow, but no more. The yellow is clearer in your pictures from today.
 
Actually looking at these a bit more closely, I'm not quite as certain these are Golden-fronted. In the first of today's pictures, it seems to show some speckling on the rump and white in the centre of the tail, which is a Red-bellied feature. Sibley mentions that the two species hybridise in the zone where they meet - which I think is around your area. So perhaps it's a hybrid - anyone else have a view?
 
The last set of photo's definitely look like this juvenile Red-bellied Woodpecker and others that come to my suet feeders this time of year after they fledge (often with their parents) and think the same is true of the first photo as well.
 

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I don't have my Sibley's so I am sitting here comparing a shot of a juvenile red-bellied on allaboutbirds against an adult golden-fronted and this is a real tough comparison! Scrogdog, your photo looks a lot like my bird, but so do the pics I've seen of golden-fronted. Sheesh!

The one detail that I think is most relevant to distinguish the two is the yellow above the bill on the golden-fronted. My pictures just aren't good enough to locate this detail (or lack of it).

Cornell (allaboutbirds) states their ranges do not overlap but their range maps for the two do appear to overlap. Sibley's has diverged from Cornell in range maps before and I've found Sibley's to be more accurate. Does anyone think that range could help us here?
 
Try using Opus here, search for a bird, and near the bottom of the page is a search the gallery feature that actually mostly works really well

And for range info, even though you should be aware of possible misids, try Ebird.org

Niels
 
Try using Opus here, search for a bird, and near the bottom of the page is a search the gallery feature that actually mostly works really well

And for range info, even though you should be aware of possible misids, try Ebird.org

Niels

Great suggestion! It looks like (1) the ranges overlap and (2) the ONLY reported hybrids between 1900 and 2010 seem to be exactly where I am.

Food for thought indeed.


EDIT: the reported hybrid data-set appears to be a single sighting. I think that makes margin-of-error a deal-breaker for that data being useful.
 
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