This afternoon at about 3:30 I found a male black-backed woodpecker near Ann Lake Campground.
I heard a woodpecker working a tree on the south side of the road (253rd Ave). It caught my attention because the cadence was not right for a downy or hairy, so I walked into the woods. It was not far. It was working a pine tree and there was much evidence of its work on several adjacent trees. I returned to the parking lot to find Linda Sparling, who also had a chance to see it. We both got photos and viewed it from only 30 feet away. It was completely unfazed by our presence. Directions: Park at the small lot along 253rd Ave by the snowmobile trail (aka "the Townsend's solitaire location"). Walk east along the road toward the campground. Across from a tall stand of pines (~200 yards? I'm "distance-challenged") look for our footprints heading in to the woods to the south. I marked the spot with a dead branch, ~2" in diameter, sticking into the ditch bank pointing south to where we walked in. The bird was only a couple of conifer rows into the woods, not very far from the road. If it's there working a tree, you can easily hear it from the road. Diana Doyle S. Minneapolis ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
