Mystery Bird: Red-bellied Woodpecker, Melanerpes carolinus

Is it a golden-fronted woodpecker?

Oops, forgot to mention the field mark. Sorry, it's early...
One field mark would be the blush of yellow and orange around the face.

I was thinking golden fronted too, but I'm seeing the red only on the back of the neck, not the crown, which leads me to the female or possibly juvenile red-bellied. Stokes seems to portray the female as lighter colored than the juvenile, so I'll put my bets on the female red-bellied woodpecker.

Looks like a female red-bellied woodpecker to me. I'm seeing orange-ish around the top of the beak and red at the back of the neck.

My husband jumped on this challenge! We're going with adult female red bellied woodpecker due to the color of the tuft at the base of the bill. It's more reddish than golden so that rules out, for us, the golden fronted woodpecker.

I agree this is definitely a female Red-bellied Woodpecker, Melanerpes carolinus carolinus- light grey face and underparts, red patch on the nape and another above the bill, although in June in Houston it appears to be right on the periphery of it's Texas breeding range (USGS Breeding Bird Survey)

Re. subspecies infomation:

Northern M. c. 'carolinus' group,
Florida M. c. 'perplexus'.
All differences are variable and these two populations are apparently not consistently distinguishable (although my experience is that birds in the Miami and Keys area are consistently different from birds in the northeastern states). All subspecies have been merged by recent authors (e.g. Short, 1982). However the same authors suggest that the birds of the Florida Keys may be distinctive enough to warrant subspecies recognition and require more study

[Sibley, 2001]

Although Houston is apparently on the edge of the range for Red-bellied, it is well out of the range for Golden-fronted. Also, a Golden-fronted should have a yellow nape, not the red visible on this bird.

And Red-bellied Woodpeckers do have a pinkish belly -- it's just that you rarely if ever actually see the belly in the field.

A familiar face in our CT yard, I also go with F Red-bellied Woodpecker. More red than gold at the nape of the neck, a little gray showing on the crown, and looks like Golden-fronted has more yellow above the bill than this bird. This year we had a nest in a cavity in a beech tree about 10 yards into the woods, and got to hear chirping young frequently for about a week, then fledglings in the yard. Love them!