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Red-Headed Woodpecker
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| Listen to Red-headed Woodpecker |
Flag birds - as some call the Red-Headed Woodpecker, often its personality matches its striking coloration. These birds can get quite aggresive toward other woodpeckers or any bird visitor that gets to close to a nest tree or food cache.
Description
The Red-headed Woodpecker measures about 8 1/2 to 9 1/2 inches long. The only woodpecker with an all red head. The body and wings patterned with black and white. In flight, note the white rump and white inner trailing half of the wings.You'll find these birds in groves, open woodlands, farmlands, suburbs, and shade trees. Common bird east of the Rockies.
Feeding Habits
These birds spend a great deal of their time flycatching from exposed perches.Red-Heads will eat insects, spiders, earthworms, mice, nuts, berries and corn.
You can attract these bird to your feeders by providing black oil sunflower seeds and suet. You can see a selection of suet feeders here.
These birds have the ability to catch insects in midair, as well as foraging on leaves and on the ground. You'll find that they cache pieces of nuts and acorns, also insects, in small cavities for use during nonbreeding season.
They will defend these caches from other woodpeckers, jays, and crows.
Nesting Habits
There has been concern for the numbers of these birds, especially in the Northeast, where they have declined. One source of their problem is competition for nest holes from starlings and other hole-nesters.Another is the decline in suitable habitats that they favor which are dead trees or large dead limbs that are often removed for firewood or to reduce the hazard of fire.
To the Red-Headed Woodpecker dead wood is a necessity for life. You can help by leaving some dead trees on your property and placing properly constructed bird houses in your backyard.
The female lays 4 to 7 white eggs in a cavity excavated 5 to 80 feet above ground. Both male and female share incubation which last about 14 days. The young leave the nest in about 30 days after the eggs hatch.
Northern populations of the Red-Headed Woodpecker are migratory and concentrate in woods with abundant acorns.
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