I’ve spent a lifetime and a full career of over 40 years writing about and taking photos of all sorts of wildlife, and birds in particular. So, it would be natural to think that I’ve seen all the birds or all the wildlife. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You might also be surprised to learn that I don’t keep a life list. So, what the heck is a life list? A life list is a simple check list of all the birds you have seen over one’s lifetime. When you see a bird for the first time you put it on your life list, indicating you have seen this bird in your lifetime. Let me remind you that there are over 11,000 species of birds so the average bird watcher never gets to see them all.

There are a small handful of birders who have over 9,000 on their personal life list but this is very rare indeed. I will never fall into these categories. I don’t keep a life list of anything. The closest I come would be the catalog of all my wildlife images in my photo management software. I have over a half a million images, representing thousands of bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian and insects.

All of this came to mind the other day while I was editing some images from a trip I took this past summer to Arizona. I had the chance to photograph a number of bird species such as California Condor and Elegant Trogon but really what stood out from all the images was a few image captures of a Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis).  I have always wanted to photograph this woodpecker.

The Lewis’s Woodpecker is one of the largest woodpeckers in America (11 inches tall) and was named after the famous explorer Meriweather Lewis, who first surveyed the area known as the Louisiana Purchase by the United States and was the first person to describe this woodpecker.

Over the years I’ve taken several trips specifically to capture some images of this unusual woodpecker. In fact, I was supposed to go to Montana this spring specifically to look for a Lewis’s Woodpecker, but it never worked out. You can imagine I was very happy to find several of these woodpeckers in northern Arizona.

The Lewis’s Woodpecker is definitely a type of woodpecker but it doesn’t seem to follow the woodpecker rules. Unlike other woodpeckers, it catches insects the same way that flycatchers do. The Lewis’s Woodpecker perches on a branch and waits for a large insect to fly by then it dashes out to grab the bug in midair before returning to the branch to eat and wait for another bug to fly by. This type of hunting is called “hawking”.

In addition, if you see one of these woodpeckers flying you would swear it was an American Crow. Woodpeckers have a very characteristic flight pattern, which consists of several strong flaps which cause the woodpecker to rise up then it tucks its wings and glides which causes the woodpecker to lose altitude. This alternating flapping and non-flapping make the woodpecker look like it is on a roller coaster ride when in flight. The Lewis’s Woodpecker flaps constantly producing a straight flight pattern.

Unlike other woodpeckers the Lewis’s usually doesn’t excavate their own nesting cavity. If they do, it is usually the male that does all the work. Otherwise, they take over the cavities of other woodpeckers or use a natural cavity for nesting. And they often reuse the same nest cavity for several years in a row. All of this is very different from other woodpecker species.

Lastly, most woodpeckers are a standard black and white. Not the Lewis’s Woodpecker. It is a strange combination of a greenish-black back and a pinkish-red belly. They really don’t look like any other woodpecker.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when I was in Arizona this summer and wasn’t even thinking about photographing Lewis’s Woodpecker and an opportunity arose. I couldn’t capture any super high-quality images, but I did manage to get a few so-so shots. This has sparked my interest in once again planning a couple trips specifically to study and capture some high-quality images of this amazing woodpecker. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the U.S. to study and capture images of wildlife. He can be followed at www.Instagram.com, www.Facebook.com and www.Twitter.com. He can be contacted via his web page at www.NatureSmart.com.