I went to Boyertown Park on June 7th at about 11:30 a.m. It was an absolutely beautiful morning! About 73 degrees Fahrenheit with occasional cloud cover. My daughter was playing disc golf with some friends, so I brought along my binoculars to do some wildlife spotting. This is a mixed forest area (although mostly deciduous) with wide, mowed lawns. In spite of many people and dogs engaged in recreational activities daily at this park (walking, having picnics, playing disc golf, playing on the playground), a downy woodpecker made a nest in the trunk of a chopped down tree.
I watched from a bench nearby as mom and dad stopped by to feed or check on the hatchlings. I had a difficult time determining which type of woodpecker I was seeing, as
hairy and downy woodpeckers look so similar. They both have speckled black and white wings, white bellies, and the red spot on the crown of their head (in males).
The differentiating factor was the beak size. When I managed to take a picture through one of the ocular lenses of my binoculars, I could clearly see the shorter beak on this female:
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