According to Audubon, about a billion birds die each year from flying into windows! and my cabin in the Wind River Canyon is no exception.  There's over ten thousand bird species in the world today, and at times I think most of them have hit a window here.  In truth some birds are more likely to fly into a window than others; finches for instance, because of their proximity to bird feeders that are always near window glass.  One of my solutions has been a plastic toy lizard, with a suction-cup, stuck to the window lessens the sickening thud, also crystals and stained glass work the same way, but of course nothing keeps the innocent from periodically killing themselves on a window; I have tear stained pages in my personal journal that will testify to the impact they make.

     One afternoon, while watching a lousy football game and nursing a sore back, a bird hit right near where I was sitting.  Looking out the window revealed a whitish bird splayed in the snow, so I headed outside.  When I rounded the southwest side of the cabin my heart sunk, because there in the snow was a woodpecker.  Not just any woodpecker, but a Downy Woodpecker was laying in the snow, her wings spread wide; I thought she was dead.  Lifting her up with my bare hands, I brushed the snow off the beautiful bird.  This little female Downy Woodpecker wasn't just beautiful, she was devastating, and alive!  She pounds trees with her beak, so her neck is stronger than most other birds.  One of her eyes was swollen, she was still with us, but disoriented.  I held her to my sweatshirt where she immediately held on like she would a tree, and I walked around to the backdoor bench. 

     This snow white and jet black woodpecker held on to my old sweatshirt with her talons for a time, then moved to my back, where she fell asleep.  I couldn't believe it, a bird I had never seen before was now asleep on my upper back!  She slept for some time, my back giving me fits, but I didn't care, because I had a Downy Woodpecker asleep on my back. 

     When she awoke, she flew to a nearby juniper, where she stayed and waited for a complete recovery.  I ran inside and grabbed my ready camera, and because this Downy Woodpecker was already comfortable with me being close, I got some wild pictures of a species that isn't doing all that well, because of loss of habitat.  When the time had come for her to go, she looked me in the eye, and flew up the Wind River Canyon till she was out-of-site, and I thought to myself, "I hope her journey will be as wonderful as her time with me was."  

     I've worked this digital file, and others from this Downy Woodpecker shoot, in many different software packages.  Yet as beautiful as she is, this picture is now hardly processed digitally at all; her beauty just shines through all the ones and zeros.  She was photographed with an old, now dead Canon 40D and the kit lens.  

Downy Woodpecker-Wind River Canyon, WyomingDowny Woodpecker female in a juniper, in the Wind River Canyon, Wyoming. If my camera wasn't ready to go at a moments notice, this photo wouldn't have been possible.  "Keep your camera ready!"  And check out my first video, The Hummingbird Itch! on my website, HogbatsPhotography.com or on You Tube.