I was wrong - how could that be?

Click to enlarge

Back on January 1, as part of my Happy New Year post, I mentioned an interesting bird that was hanging around our house. I was sure I had figured out that it was a Black-and-White Warbler. I crosschecked it in two bird books and on the Internet. I had compared it against similar birds - the Blackpool Warbler and the Black-throated Gray Warbler and was sure it wasn't either of those. At least I was right about that!

My wife put more pictures of the bird on her Facebook account and asked there about its identity and the answer came back that our mystery bird is a female Downy Woodpecker. I was thrown by the fact that it doesn't have a red spot on the rear of the head but that's because only the male Downy Woodpecker has the red spot.
I'm a little surprised that my bird books didn't include the Downy Woodpecker as similar birds to the Black-and-White Warbler but I guess there are limits to how many they can include. They probably figured no one would think a woodpecker was a warbler. I'll try not to make assumptions in the future but we all know how that will go. I'm just glad to know what to call our visitor. It's a little sad to not be able to announce that a bird that isn't normally in our area this time of year is still here. I'll have to wait for an Ivory-billed Woodpecker to show up!