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I was out walking the dog on the golf course yesterday when he stopped due to a woodpecker's knocking on a tree. As I stood there letting the dog be curious, I heard a few more knocks from more birds in the same area, so I walked over to see them.
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As I approached the trees, I saw 4-5 Hairy Woodpeckers, somewhat low in the trees, and the closer I got, the more there were! I ended up right next to the group of trees where there were between 40-50 Hairy Woodpeckers flitting through from west to east. I was ten feet from the trees and they were unmistakably Hairy Woodpeckers. I found this very odd, as with the amount of Hairy's I see every day here, this has never happened in six years, and I've never seen it before with any woodpecker species. (Not to say it doesn't happen.)
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Also, as they worked their way away from me, I continued my walk, and about 150-200 feet further west was a similarly-sized group of Blue Jays. Were they having some sort of dispute with each other? Maybe that was totally unrelated, who knows?
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In any case, can anyone comment as to what was going with all those Hairy Woodpeckers?
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Mike VanderStelt
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5 comments:
Quadrennial picoides convention? just guessing...
Zachary's answer makes as much sense as anything I can think of. That really sounds strange, Mike; I'll send a few emails to folks with more expertise and see what they say.
I've been looking on the P/C off & on all day, and haven't found any reference to Hairy's "flocking together" anywhere
MMMMM!
Mike VanbderStelt
After a little research, I reached the conclusion that birds, especially those in the Woodpecker family, benefit from group foraging as their foraging efficiency increases as their vigilance (wariness of danger) decreases. Since birds in flocks tend to have lower vigilance levels, their foraging efficiency increases, and this may be the primary scientific understanding for this phenomenon. In any event, large woodpecker flocks are not very well documented.
Here are two pertinent, interesting articles:
The Advantages of Social Foraging in Downy Woodpeckers
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000334728480319X
Ecological Aspects of some Mixed-Species Foraging Flocks of Birds
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1942443
Zachary, thanks for those articles. It's fascinating in the winter watching these little "gangs" of chickadees and friends when they come through an area. I've gotta remember to watch the behavior of the Downies in the group next time I see it; they're always very "watchful" when they come to our suet (heads rotating most of the time looking for danger) and it will be interesting to see if there's any less head-rotating when they're in one of those "gangs".
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