This morning I met some new neighbors. At our suet feeder in the backyard was a mother downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) and her little one. Well, he was larger than his mother, but still had the plump, floofy-feathered, slightly disgruntled look about him I’ve noticed in many baby birds. After clinging to the bottom of the suet feeder and swaying about awhile, he gave up and sat on the top of the feeder. Mother took over the tricky task of getting the suet. She would hop to the top of the feeder, feed the young bird the suet, and then duck under again for more.

Throughout the day a few other young birds and a male adult also made an appearance. I’m not sure if all the woodpeckers were from the same household, but I’d like to think so. At one point we had five woodpeckers flitting about together between the pergola and the feeder.

Here’s a photo of how we rig up our suet feeder so sparrows and starlings cannot access it. Since we leave the plastic cover on the suet and expose just the bottom, only birds that can cling upside down are able to eat the suet. So far it has worked great. We’ve seen both nuthatches and a chickadee here and there visit the feeder, but the woodpeckers are by far our most frequent visitors.