Home Improvement
by Gary Holmes
Title
Home Improvement
Artist
Gary Holmes
Medium
Photograph
Description
A pair of Red-Bellied Woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) has nested in a condominium of holes in a neighboring tree for the past several years. For the past week they have been adding on a room, often drilling for prolonged periods inside the resonating hole. They periodically pop their heads out of the opening, look carefully around for nearby predators, and then spit out mouthfuls of debris. In my tangential mind, it reminds me somewhat of the classic movie, "The Great Escape," with the prisoners finding creative ways to dump dirt they had dug out of their secret tunnel. In this shot, the male was agitated after fighting off some house sparrows that had challenged their ownership of the property, and his crown was puffed up for several minutes before he settled back down to the task.
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Gary Holmes, photographer: I am not a studio photographer, but an opportunist recorder of nature, landscapes, abstract, and other found objects of interest. Although I have been a photographer for decades, I have only started posting them for others to see and purchase since about September 2012. Please see my larger collection of posts at http://500px.com/holmesidepi. I had sufficient encouragement from posts on other sites to try putting some up for sale on FAA, and have now successfully sold some of my works. I plan to progressively start posting the best of those on FAA over the next few months.
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Uploaded
March 20th, 2013
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Viewed 256 Times - Last Visitor from Cambridge, MA on 04/16/2024 at 7:26 AM
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Comments (11)
Chris Scroggins
Gary, I've never seen a photo of one of these woodpeckers with it's crown all puffed up, it's lovely! I hope that the woodpeckers nest in your neighborhood again this year. **voted** faved**
Gary Holmes replied:
Chris, thank you very much. All you need are some sparrows to challenge its nest, and voila, bad hair day.