I have been posting a lot of bird photographs and am always never quite satisfied.  It is ultimately the fun of the chase, because as I’ve said before there’s always an issue, always something that is not quite perfect. A great bird photograph is not just about sharpness and composition, but it’s also about capturing the bird doing something interesting, not just interesting but behavior that is representative of species behavior.

Given all of this I’d really like to take my hat off to Jeffrey Arguedas of the EPA for this really wonderful (picture perfect) image of a woodpecker showing his head last month in Limon, Costa Rica. I believe that it is a black-cheeked woodpecker, Melanerpes pucherani. The expression almost of surprise on the woodpeckers face and the stop action flakes of wood flying out of the nesting hole really make this for me.