Figure 1 – Hairy woodpecker, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I photographed this female hairy woodpecker – Picoides villous – on Thanksgiving morning.  She had just landed on a branch that was covered with new fallen snow, and you can see some of the snow knocked off and falling in space. That is a feature of the image that I really like.  I also chose to set the background dark subduing the it into a twilight state and then dodging out the highlights in the feathers.

The hairy may be compared to the smaller downy woodpecker, distinguished by its size, longer beak, and lack of banding (“ladder”) on its tail feathers.

These are New England’s white-backed woodpeckers and are a common sight pecking away at trees.  Sometimes they awaken you in the morning by pecking at the shingles on your house.

Canon T2i tripod mounted with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 400 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode, 1/320th sec at f/7.1 with +1 exposure compensation (because of the snow).