Downy in the Phrag

Phragmites are notorious for taking over and turning everything into Phragmites, leaving little room for other plants and the hosts of other organisms that live with those plants.

One exception is whatever it is that attracts Downy Woodpeckers to the winter stalks. Somebody is living in there, and this small woodpecker is determined to chisel them out. (Dried stalks are natural tubes that can be utilized by some insect larvae.)

This male was whacking away at the stems in this patch, where I’ve seen this same behavior in the past. I heard the bird before seeing him.

0 Responses to “Downy in the Phrag”



  1. Leave a Comment

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s




Share

Bookmark and Share

Join 685 other subscribers
Nature Blog Network

Archives


%d bloggers like this: