The forehead and crown are brown, nape patch is red, and throat is white. It’s not where you’d expect to find a woodpecker, but flickers eat mainly ants and beetles, digging for them with their unusual, slightly curved bill. Brown Thrashers are mimics, like Northern Mockingbirds and Gray Catbirds.They're somewhat secretive, nesting on or near the ground and foraging exclusively on the ground.They rarely if ever visit feeders. Northern Flickers are large, brown woodpeckers with a gentle expression and handsome black-scalloped plumage. The Downy Woodpecker and Hairy Woodpecker can be found throughout all of Canada and USA, with the Hairy Woodpecker being the most southern traveler of the two. On walks, don’t be surprised if you scare one up from the ground. This brown woodpecker flashes bright colors under the wings and tail when it flies. It is also the most common woodpecker in eastern North America. The smallest and perhaps most familiar species in Canada is the Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens.

They are also fiercely territorial, and will even destroy the nests of other species. This species and the Downy Woodpecker are remarkably similar in pattern, differing mainly in size and bill shape.

Face is white with a large, brown cheek patch, creating a white eyebrow and line from the bill to neck. The Downy is the smallest, the Pileated is the largest, and the Hairy is right in the middle. Its ringing calls and short bursts of drumming can be heard in spring almost throughout North America. The Rufous woodpecker (Micropternus brachyurus) is a brown woodpecker which is found in parts of India, Nepal, Thailand, Myanmar, and other parts of Asia. Did not expect him this far north ( range limit) and last year due to very brief appearances deferred to the red headed but confirmed it this time as he had made our black oiled/ mixed seeds feeder and tree suet fat his mainstay diet throughout the winter. They often occur together, but the Hairy, a larger bird, requires larger trees; it is usually less common, especially in the east, and less likely to show up in suburbs and city parks.

Their heads are also black sporting white lines down both the sides and forehead and crown of the bird.

They also have a white or pale black and white spotting on their wings, and depending on the subspecies, their throat and bellies can vary from a white color to a sooty brown coloring. Guelph, Ontario Jan 2018 Have had a male red bellied woodpecker for a couple of years now. Its two major subspecies, the red-shafted and the yellow-shafted, were formerly separate species until they were merged in the 1980s, though some ornithological organizations still list these birds separately. Range: Central and Eastern United States with some overlap in south Ontario. Description: Red-Headed Woodpeckers are among only four species of woodpecker to store food. Along with Hairy Woodpeckers, Ontario also is home to the Red-headed Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Three-toed Woodpecker, Black-backed Woodpecker, Northern Flicker and the Pileated Woodpecker. Two very different-looking forms -- Yellow-shafted Flicker in the east and north, and Red-shafted Flicker in the west -- were once considered separate species. Bearing a heavy resemblance to the much smaller Downy Woodpecker, the Hairy Woodpecker adults are mainly black on their upper parts and wings. the Hairy Woodpecker; the Pileated Woodpecker (Ontario has several other species of woodpecker including the Sapsucker, Black-backed, Flicker, Three-toed and Red-bellied). However, the larger clutch size of Lewis’ Woodpecker, as compared to other Melanerpes species (Koenig 1987), resulted in an average of 2.3 fledglings/nest (Newlon and Saab 2011), which is higher than the 1.8 fledglings/nest for Red-headed Woodpecker in Ontario and northern New York (Frei et al.