Expert: Julia Booth - 5/12/2008

Question
Hi there! Sorry to bug but I saw a beautiful bird today that I can't identify. I have not seen anything that wasn't in my Birds of Ontario book before, I was in Rednersville, Ontario, and I thought I saw a type of woodpecker, it had a beautiful red throat that I knew I would remember, like it had a necklace with a pendant on, against a white breast, with black and bits of white on the rest. There were two right together that looked the same to me, up high in a willow eating the new leaves (maybe rather un-woodpecker-like, not sure). When I look in my book all the woodpeckers have red on the head if they have a red throat, and I didnt see any....Do they maybe get red on the head later? Or maybe it was a passing-through bird not in my book? Bit of a mystery anyway and I've been googling woodpeckers for a long time but still haven't seen it. Thanks in advance and if you don't know since I'm probably not explaining very well lol thanks at least for reading all this :)

Answer
Okay, my first question for you is as to whether or not you are sure -or how it is that you came to the conclusion that what you saw was a woodpecker. Common behavior is traveling vertically to the tree instead of perching, creeping, boring etc. I'm thinking you know that already.

Woodpeckers that might be found in your area are:

American Three-toed Woodpecker
Black-backed Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Lewis's Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Red-headed Woodpecker
Red-breasted Sapsucker
Red-naped Sapsucker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

The only one that remotely meets your description would be the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, but the head is red on males of the species. It could be that what you saw were recently fledged, and therefore would have juvenile plumage. I can't say for sure.

Here is the Ontario Birding Homepage
http://www.web-nat.com/bic/ont/index.html