Black-cheeked Woodpecker

Here's another from our recent time in Ecuador. This species is fairly common in the western lowlands. This was taken at a hotel near Santo Domingo. It's not a birding lodge but there are plenty of the commoner birds around. I asked permission of the manager there if I could put up my pop blind near the compost area and put some bananas down. Of course she didn't object.

Bananas are a staple food for birds of the western lowlands - first as a naturally occuring plant but later because bananas are widely cultivated in Western Ecuador. Over the course of our 2 night stay there I was able to photograph 15 species of birds, most of them coming into the bananas but others that would naturally move through the area anyway. This is a setup perch and I was able to position it so that the afternoon lighting caught a particular yellowish tree. It's cropped to about 50% of the original image (I should have had the blind closer but had been trying for flight shots of tanagers).

MkIV 500F4 1.4x 1/400 F8, av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, iso 800, Feisol rapid tripod 3372, pop up blind.