A regular around here. The Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). And here you get a glimpse of why it has its name, a very tiny smudge of red on its belly. They can be found in the eastern United States, from Florida north to Canada.
Red-bellied Woodpeckers eat fruit, nuts, seeds, berries (such as Poison Ivy berries shown above) and tree sap.
They also eat arboreal arthropods and other invertebrates which include caterpillars, flies, grasshoppers, and the larvae of beetles. And you can add to the list, tree frogs, small fish, nestling birds and bird eggs, and Brown and Green Anoles. That’s a Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei) in the photo above, which I photographed in Florida. There it is an invasive species, and seems to be everywhere. It is native to Cuba and the Bahamas. And these woodpeckers enjoy the suet that I put out for them here at my cabin.
