57/365: "Even the woodpecker owes its success to the fact that it uses its head and keeps pecking away until it finishes the job it starts." ~ Coleman Cox [Explore]

This morning I walked down to the mailbox and naturally I brought my camera along. I was enjoying the sound of birds in the trees when I saw a flash of white and looked to see a female Downy Woodpecker fly from one tree to one quite nearby. I started taking pictures and to my surprise, this cool little lady wasn't very timid and allowed me to get close enough to take a bunch of nice pictures! I will never cease to be amazed that I can take nice non-macro pictures with my macro lens!! I feel incredibly lucky today that I got this picture to share with you all!

When I started working on this picture, I thought it would need a texture, but when I was done with it, my husband pointed out that it looked just fine without the texture and at most, might benefit by having a light vignette. I tried it and agreed! However, I have the picture below for you to see! You will also notice that in this final version, I removed a few more sticks to make a cleaner outline.)

Downy Woodpeckers are the smallest woodpecker in North America! They can be found in almost every state, but we only started seeing them around here a couple of years ago. Last year we saw a bunch of them and we think there were probably two pairs nesting and coming to our feeders to fill up on suet. I started seeing them this year about a week ago and I really hoped to take pictures of one in a tree, though I didn't actually think it would happen. Hooray for great surprises!! :D (If you'd like to know more about these adorable birds, Wiki has a very nice page here: Wikipedia: Downy Woodpecker)

Coleman Cox (1889 - 1967) was a writer from the 1920's who wrote short books of great quotations, usually directed toward sales. Employers were his biggest audience, often buying the books to give to their employees as gifts. Coleman Cox Bio

Explored on Flickr on February 26, 2013. Highest position: #332.