Hairy woodpeckers have subtle plumage differences depending on location. Present here are the Eastern and Pacific variations.
In both hairies and downies, males have a red patch at the back of their heads while females do not. Juveniles have a red patch atop their heads, which my Sibley guide notes is occasionally yellow in hairies. On this particular juvenile the patch was noticeably orange. Another trait shared between downies and hairies is that females tend to have shorter beaks than males, making it more difficult to distinguish between a male downy and female hairy if you don't get a good look. Complicating matters is that the two species are spread across much of the U.S. and Canada and overlap ranges in most of those regions.
I'm not a top flight birder, so there have been many times where if I don't get a good look at a bird hammering in the treetops, my field notes just say "downy or hairy woodpecker". These woodpeckers posed so perfectly, however, that they left little doubt.
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Rotting Luck
A female hairy woodpecker works a rotting log for bugs, I came across her near the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center on the western side of Olympic National Park. She was hammering into the log pretty hard but there was too little light to freeze her motion, so I waited until she paused to take her portrait.
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