In a fight between a female Hairy Woodpecker and a male Common Grackle – where would you place your bet?
If you are like me, you would place your bet squarely on the male Common Grackle – and I would probably have been so confident I would have made a larger bet than my normal $.10 – maybe even $.25! – and I would have lost my quarter.
If you were watching the bird feeder cam early yesterday morning – about 6:30AM my time (Central Time) – you would have seen a female Hairy Woodpecker on the hanging tubular peanut feeder with one of her juveniles. The juvenile looked like her, and you could tell it was a juvenile because she was feeding it peanuts. A male Common Grackle was on the platform feeder. The grackles also relish those peanuts and so he lunged at both of them to dislodge them from the feeder.
Grackles are big birds – bigger than Hairy Woodpeckers who are just a bit smaller than robins. And they are aggressive – particularly around feeders. They eat what they want, when they want, and they will push other birds around at will. But not this time. He lunged at that feeder and her juvenile immediately flew off to the nearby tree trunk. She held her ground leaned towards the grackle and snapped her beak several times. The grackle backed off and went back to the platform feeder. Her juvenile stayed on the tree trunk, but she kept eating peanuts. Several seconds later, while sitting on the platform feeder, the grackle looked right at her, arched his wings and puffed out his feathers so he looked much bigger than he actually was, then lunged at her again. And once again, she leaned towards him as he lunged, snapped her beak, and held her position. He went back to the platform feeder and she kept eating. He stared at her for some seconds and then flew to the ground unter the feeders and started eating. She stayed on that feeder for some time – calmly eating peanuts – and when she was finished, she flew to the tree trunk to join her juvenile – and she popped a peanut into its waiting mouth. The grackle immediately flew to the now free peanut feeder and began eating.
I never ever would have guessed this would be the outcome. I would have bet that male grackle would have immediately dislodged the smaller female Hairy Woodpecker at his first lunge and taken over that feeder. Never underestimate a female! I also imagined her puffing out her breast just a bit while saying to her juvenile, “And that’s how it’s done!”