We are fairly sure that this is an adolescent red-headed woodpecker. You know, the ones that almost don’t look anything like this when they grow up? Grown up, they have a bright red head, front and back, as if someone dipped them in a fire-engine-red paint can up to their neck. If you look very closely at this guy, you can see that his head is a slightly different shade from the black color on the rest of him– sort of dark gray. And he hasn’t yet got his black and white feathers properly sorted out on his wings and back.

He ate suet at our lake-side feeder. And then he hung out in the white pines for a bit.

If we meet him next year, he’ll look like this: