While drinking my morning coffee on a mild Saturday in January, I happened to notice that the Pileated woodpecker had flown into our backyard and was pecking away on several trees. My luck photographing these birds has been poor at best. Not that I do not get close to them; they have landed five feet from me on several occasions ... just not when I had a camera with me! Every time I intentionally try and photograph this bird, it takes flight before I am within a couple of hundred feet of it. My one success to date was because I was screened by thick foliage and there is no such cover in January in upstate New York.

Undeterred, I grabbed the Canon 7D Mark II and the Canon EF 100-400 F/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens and headed outside. Of course as soon as I rounded the corner into the back yard the pecking had stopped and the Pileated was no where to be found. I slowly made my way into the woods keeping alert for any sign of the birds (there is always two it seems). I spent about five minutes working myself gradually deeper into the woods careful to go slow and be quiet.

No luck. No bird.

After another few minutes of listening, I gave up and started to head back inside.

After taking no more than three steps and out of seemingly nowhere, the Pileated flew right past me within five feet and at shoulder height to come to perch on a dead tree fifteen feet away. 

Startled, yet excited to get a closeup, clean, full body shot, I calmly raised my camera and fired off a shot. Only to see in the view finder that it was too late ... the Pileated flew away before I squeezed off the shot.

Frustrated yet again I watched as he landed in a tree not fifty feet away. Agitated, I hastily made my way into a location where I had a mostly clear line of sight and began snapping away.

To my surprise for the next ten minutes I followed the Pileated from tree to tree as he pecked away about 40 feet above me. I worked my way closer and closer as he seemed to ignore me.

The following images are a few of the images I selected for processing. They have been post-processed in Photoshop CC to clean up the background and correct the exposure.

Thanks for stopping by today.