Melanerpes carolinus Behavior

Crumby is feeding the birds again this winter because the natural food supply, despite decent rain in the fall, ran short early.  So Crumby has a sunflower seed feeder hung from a low limb of the pecan tree which dwells within the perspective afforded by Crumby's Lazy Boy.

Daily the resident pair of red-bellied woodpeckers visit the feeder area.  The female makes several trips to the feeder throughout the morning and into the afternoon if the seed holds out.  The male never goes to the feeder.  Instead he spends all morning traveling up and down the trunk of the pecan tree, or alternatively, guarding a small area directly under the feeder.  If any other birds venture into this circle, typically a white-winged dove or red-winged blackbird, he attacks them.   And I kid ye not, he can make the feathers fly with a woodpecker peck.

He seems to eat the cereal grain or maybe the bits of cracked corn that Crumby throws on the ground under the feeder, but eschews the sunflower seed.  Interesting niche separation of the sexes, eh?