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“The woodpecker pecked out a little round hole And made him a house in the telephone pole.”
-Elizabeth Madox Roberts
They look classy in smooth, tan feathers with black and white backs and bright red heads. They have big beaks, they’re brash, and when they hit the bird feeder for a peanut or a piece of orange, all the other birds scatter. And, like the smooth operators from an old Mafia movie, they’ve been taking over new territories for the last 100 years, making them the most common wood-pecker in the eastern and central United States. They are bold and beautiful red-bellied woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus).
Despite its name, the red-bellied woodpecker doesn’t have much of a red belly—usually just a small pastel patch that is hard to see. But it does have the classic, stiff woodpecker tail feathers and the big woodpecker bill that it uses to pound holes in trees, fence posts, and one of its favorites, im-mortalized in the Elizabeth Madox Roberts poem—wooden telephone poles.
A lot of woodpeckers use their beaks to chip and prod at trees, digging for bugs and grubs, but the red-bellied is a little different. Instead of boring into limbs and trunks, this woodpecker thrives on the fruits and nuts that plants provide. Everything from blueberries to oranges (which give it the name “orange sapsucker” in some areas) and acorns to hazelnuts is on the menu, with some insects, lizards, frogs, and other small creatures tossed in to round out the diet.
Red-bellied woodpeckers aren’t known as mi-grants, and they don’t stash food, so their territo-ries need to provide food and shelter during every season of the year. A good territory is worth hold-ing on to, and both males and females will threaten intruders, sometimes to the point of grappling in the air as one tries to dominate the other.
A territory with abundant resources is also a ter-ritory that will support a family, so every spring, the male in the territory courts the female that shares part of his land. He drums on a good tree branch or utility pole, creating a beat that echoes through the woods and lets others know this spot is taken. The hen is aloof and waits for him to build them a home, which he does by digging a nest cavity on the underside of a branch or in a tree trunk. If he finds a cavity already built or a nest box that suits his purpose, he may take it over rather than dig a nest of his own.
When he has just the right cavity, he pokes his head out from inside, gives his distinctive “kwirrr” call, and ducks back in to gently tap on the walls inside the nest. The female flies in, takes a quick peek inside, then dashes off to a nearby tree.
Two red-bellied woodpecker chicks poke their heads out of their nest.
Image credit: WILLIAM H. MAJOROS/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
They play this game for days before she finally jumps in the hole. He steps aside to make sure that there is plenty of room and then both birds start tapping the walls inside the nest. What began as his cavity is now their home.
A red-bellied woodpecker’s diet is varied, including a variety of forest foods ranging up in size to insects, lizards, frogs, and other small creatures.
Image credit: LWOLFARTIST/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The hen lays one white egg per day until a clutch of four is complete. After the fourth egg, she exposes her bare incubation patch and settles in to warm and protect her eggs for the day. She takes breaks to eat and stretch her wings and then quickly returns to the job. The male also forms a brood patch, and he takes the night shift, keeping the eggs warm and protected as the evening cools and hole-exploring creatures, such as flying squirrels, come out. The fe-male still protects the eggs, so even at night, she is never far from the nest.
Red-bellied woodpeckers are serious about defending their territory.
Image credit: MEGHAN CASSIDY/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
A fledgling red-bellied woodpecker.
Image credit: LORIE SHAULL/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
This female red-bellied woodpecker shows off the light red patch that gives the species its name.
Image credit: KEN THOMAS/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
After 12 days of work and stress, the effort starts to pay off. The eggs hatch, and four blind and help-less nestlings huddle in the sawdust of their home. It’s time for a new kind of stress for the parents. Hatchlings grow fast, and in a few weeks, the blind and bald jellybean-sized birds are as large as their parents. Fast growth takes a lot of energy, and the young are not shy about loudly demanding more. The adults spend every sunlight hour feeding their hungry chicks.
Leaving the nest means that the young birds change from nestlings to fledglings. The world outside is a lot bigger than the nest hole they left, and the fledglings’ behavior changes with the new surroundings. They cling tightly to trees and don’t move very much. Their raucous demands for food change to soft calls, and they are clumsy, sometimes losing their grip and tumbling to the ground before they learn to properly hold on to a tree.
As the young birds become more independent, the parents become less tolerant of their presence. They stop feeding the young and begin actively chasing them out of the territory. But that’s okay—now it’s time for the young birds to reach out, explore, and become the new generation of smooth operators taking over new territories and pushing the ongoing expansion of the red-bellied woodpeckers.
REFERENCE
Miller, K. E., D. L. Leonard Jr., C. E. Shackelford, R. E. Brown, and R. N. Conner (2020). Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melaner-pes carolinus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (P. G. Rodewald, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.rebwoo.01