Wendy Woodpecker in Winter Wonderland

I've fallen behind on posting my recent photos but today I had an unexpected visitor into my garden so I felt I needed to post it straight away.  I was WFH (working from home) because I couldn't get into the office because of the snow.  I've made sure that there is always food out for the birds and as you may have seen in my previous posts I get a fair variety of wild birds coming to feed.  As I was returning to the lounge from the kitchen with a well deserved cup of coffee I spotted a medium size bird go past the window.  I crept up to the window and saw this lovely woodpecker hop onto the branch above one of the famous fruity balls.  I ran out to my study, picked up my camera, put on the long lens and quickly checked all the settings before returning to the lounge window to get this first shot.

I really had expected her to have flown off before I got back from the study but no, she stayed for quite a while.  Then she swung down and grabbed the fruity ball with one claw as she held on tight to the branch with the other.

Then she got down to the job of pecking the food out of the ball.  I have lots of blurred photos at this point as woodpeckers move their head very fast and the ball was also swinging about wildly.  I changed some settings on the camera to open the aperture, reduce the ISO setting and speed up the shutter to try and get some better quality and less blurred shots.

This last image was as she started to get back up onto the the branch after she'd had her fill.  Unfortunately she didn't stay long before she flew off.  I didn't get a decent picture of her back on the branch as the camera decided to focus on the piece of branch in front of her and the wider aperture made it a shallow depth of field which meant she was out of focus.  I didn't get chance to change the settings again before she had gone.

You might be wondering why I am referring to her as she in this blog as you probably know I'm no great expert on birds.  Yes, of course, I looked it up on the RSPB bird identifier and the male great spotted woodpecker has a red patch on the back of his head.  I'm getting there, slowly.  Maybe someone will buy me a bird identification book for Christmas, three more sleeps to find out.