Alaska magazine Photo Contest

Description: Black-backed Woodpeckers are an uncommon resident of the north, often found in burned forest where it lives off large beetle larvae found in trees. I like the composition of this photo I shot just outside the airport in Homer where this bird was perched near a tangle of spruce branches in a dense spruce stand. Rare on the lower Kenai, perhaps this enterprising bird was a pioneer from farther north where large fires have burned in recent years.