How glad I am to have caught these two “dancing.” I was already questioning my state of mind, as I’ve been outside a lot this past week but hardly seen any animals. Finally, another encounter:
These two green woodpeckers were so preoccupied with themselves that they didn’t realize they were courting right in the middle of the footpath/cycle path. I had a good minute with them until—of course—a cyclist followed by an inline skater came along the path.
A beautiful dance, and I’m guessing the male is the one trying to impress the female (here with a yellow patch on her back) with cloned wing beats and a big head bob. I would have liked to have watched longer, but I’m so happy I was able to witness this ceremonyeven if I would have preferred a lower angle. But that would have required me to get off my bike, and by then they would have been gone.
Since I started wandering through the forest more consciously, I see them often. It used to be something special to see a woodpecker. Is this due to my training, or are there simply more woodpeckers in the forest? He diligently and diligently worked on the branch and got a few delicacies from the bark.
…once more. The more time I spent in the woods, the more of these funny birds I find – or at least their laughing sound can be heard everywhere. This was not so shy at all although he spottet me first and flew off a few meters. Sneaking up and moving very slowly he did not mind me anymore for a couple of seconds.
Same day on which I had the luck to meet both relatives of the woodpecker family and this fellow was sitting quite low on trunk. Doesn’t it look very stern?
Light was not the best so I had to crank up the ISO and used some tools to make those images look nicer. Location: somewhere between Maunzen- and Jacobiweiher.
They are quite a common guest in the woods around here and they are not even hard to track down once you learned about their call; it sound a little bit like a high pitched laughter. The hard part, is to get a decent shot of the green woodpecker. Quite shy, it stays in the upper reaches of the trees, despite hunting for insects on the ground. So it would take patients and time to get this right. I am not at the point where I am ready to spent a day in a hideout and wait for the bird to come into my viewfinder. All these images here are more or less drive by actions and so this one is shot from below, while it was climbing up a tree and singing… eh.. laughing at me, when on top. 😉
This was taken at the Jacobiweiher.
