Surely our most common North American Woodpecker, Downy Woodpeckers nest in dead trees or in dead parts of live trees. They typically choose a small stub (averaging around 7 inches in diameter) that leans away from the vertical, and place the entrance hole on the underside. They’re diet is varied, eating mainly insects, including beetle larvae that live inside wood or tree bark as well as ants and caterpillars. They eat pest insects including corn earworm, tent caterpillars, bark beetles, and apple borers. About a quarter of their diet consists of plant material, particularly berries, acorns, and grains. Downy Woodpeckers are common feeder birds, eating suet and black oil sunflower seeds and occasionally drinking from hummingbird feeders. (All About Birds)
Specific Feedback Requested
Any
Technical Details
Canon 60D, Canon 70-300mm IS USM Zoom @ 240mm, f/5.6, 1/2000 sec., ISO 800. Processed in ACR and PSE 2020 for exposure and cropping. Topaz De-noise applied.
Hi @terryb . Great to get a nice woodpecker in the open with a pleasing complimentary background. Those are all good things about this image.
Things I wish were different:
The head is pointed away and the eye looks like it is about half closed. Hopefully you were in burst mode and took a whole bunch of frames so you could get the eye open and maybe a more favorable head turn.
Composition. I’m not fond of where the bird is in the frame. Far too centered to make a pleasing view. Easy enough to crop and change that. Even a vertical crop would probably work.
You indicated you used Topaz Denoise, but the image background is still very noisy. I don’t know why at ISO 800 unless the original was underexposed by quite a bit and you had to push it up in post.
I just took the image into Photoshop and used the Adobe Camera Raw filter with a mask targeting the background and applied noise reduction and got a much cleaner look.
I also did a crop to eliminate some space from the left and added some to the bottom with content aware fill. Here’s the result.
A nice catch, Terry. I like Keith’s reworked version, though I’d be inclined to go with the vertical composition he mentioned as it seems to me to fit the pose of the woodpecker better.
By the way, my wife has been seeing a woodpecker (either a downy or a hairy, but probably the former) going in and out of one of our swallow boxes lately. Unfortunately, I’ve been tied up in other things and haven’t had a chance to stake it out yet.
Thanks @Dennis_Plank. I considered a vertical originally, but didn’t try it.
Very cool. I’ve had pairs investigate the bluebird boxes from time-to-time, but have never had a pair actually nest. They do sometimes use the boxes as roosting sites in winter. I haven’t seen a Hairy around here in quite some time. I hope you get a pair of nesters. I would love to see some woodpecker hatchlings!
I also like Keith’s rework and am glad to see that it can be done from the JPEG. Dennis made an excellent suggestion by considering a vertical crop which would possibly eliminate the treetrunk in the background. One could do some very careful content aware filling to make up for the treetrunk. All in all, this is a nice image.
I also have Downy woodpecker’s in my neighborhood. The juveniles are hanging out right now. In addition, I have some Hairy Woodpeckers which look like an oversized Downy. Because I cannot get them the pose on a decent perch, I may post some of the juveniles, one a Downey, and the other I believe is a juvenile Hairy.
I have lots of downy’s hanging around, and used to have a decent population of Hairy’s. But I haven’t seen a Hairy in a couple years. Don’t know what’s become of them. Maybe too many Downy and Red-bellied woodpeckers around.
