Good news! my 40D is back and working. Yea! I managed a couple hours in the blind yesterday and was surprised and pleased to hear this beautiful woodpecker on the tree nearest my blind. The Red-bellied makes quite a loud raspy "kwirr" repeated in short bursts then a pause then repeated again. You can her this bird coming in from quite a distance. So.... Gave me time to get the 1.4 off the lens and get this whole bird in frame. Horray. He seems to be much bolder than the female and I was able to get quite a few photos of him. He so amused me with this intersting behavior, he'd pick away at the suet with his belly pressed against the tree then when some chunks would fall out he's cup his wings and catch them then pick them out of his breast feathers. Too funny. I've never seen a woodpecker do this before and he did this repeatedly so obvisouly has learned he gets more food that way. Pretty clever fellow.
Editing note, I cloned a bit of the suet feeder out of the upper left tree area.
