Sapsuckers chiseling frozen trees

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Today I went out in late morning to see if any of the wintering sapsuckers would be out after we hit -19 degrees F last night. The temp was up to around 7 degrees F when I located this male Williamson's Sapsucker drilling repeatedly at the lower part of the trunk including the base of a large ponderosa pine in which I have previously seen a male Williamson's feeding this season. It is very unusual to see a sapsucker working at the base or lower part of trunk as they tend to feed above 4 feet or so in my experience (and as documented by the location of thousands of sap wells in Canon City trees).
I watched from across the street to avoid disturbing him and observed him moving around the tree a lot more than I usually observe as though having difficulty finding food. After a few minutes he flew to another pine not far away but stayed only a few minutes before flying high off into the distance. After he left I went up to the tree where he had been chiseling and took photos of the holes (see middle pic for the holes that look reddish) he had made and all the bark and wood chips that had fallen on the snow as shown in the bottom pic.
I also found a second male Williamson's Sapsucker at Centennial Park and he behaved similarly to this one. SeEtta

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