This woodpecker has been hanging out in my local area for a couple of months and after seeing a couple of recent reports/photos from others I finally thought I should try my luck spotting it. And what luck I had. As soon as I got to the area where the woodpecker has been seen, it flew to a tree right in front of me at eye level and I got this series of shots, all within 5 minutes of getting there. I wish it was always this easy. But in the end it all balanced out because in past years I had failed to get photos or even just spot this rare woodpecker whenever they had been seen, even when others had photographed it only 5 minutes earlier and pointed me to the very trees where they had photographed it. I must have tried a dozen times in the past to get a photo of this species without any luck.