Mr. and Mrs.

 

I've been wanting to get pictures of the male and female Acorn Woodpeckers that would be easy to compare. In my wildest dreams we would one day see babies come to the feeders.  This is the male.
The marking on his head are black beak, white and then red crown.

Here is the female. She has a black beak, white, then a black band before the red crown. I actually had to go to the bird guide book to figure this out. One day I saw them at the feeder together and felt they must be a pair but they didn't stay long enough for me to get a picture to figure out the difference. Now I can tell which is which and they come and go almost every day but usually not together. They are larger than a lot of the other birds we see here and the smaller birds clear out until the woodpeckers have had their fill. It is a delight to have them as regular visitors.