American Three-Toed Woodpecker
February 2012 – Sand Lake, WA
I was pretty excited to see this Three-Toed Woodpecker. But, he didn’t even seem to notice me. He was far more interested in ripping the bark off an old snag in search of grubs. As the name would indicate, these woodpeckers have only 3 toes per foot (other woodpeckers have 4). While these birds are widespread around the northern forests of the world, this sighting is near the southern part of their range in the western US – not a common sighting for the area. In recent years, it’s been determined that the American birds are genetically distinct from their Eurasian cousins, so the addition of “American” to the species name.