Pájaro carpintero de cabeza roja

While small farms and orchards can support the Red-headed Woodpecker, the movement toward large-scale monoculture practices has eliminated much of the habitat that used to be available to these birds. The loss of diversity, as well as the elimination of windrows and other habitat that would fall between smaller plots, means that these areas provide very little to birds.

Historically, Indigenous land stewardship using fire maintained the open savanna habitat that Red-headed Woodpeckers prefer. However, fire suppression has allowed young trees to encroach into these habitats, replacing open woodlands with dense, closed forests.

Standing dead trees and even dead limbs on living trees provide necessary habitat for cavity nesters like the Red-headed Woodpecker. Natural cavities are rare, especially in living trees, so the removal of dead trees and limbs has a big impact on whether a bird will be able to nest. Firewood cutting, deforestation, and even the removal of trees in urban areas for safety concerns all reduce the habitat available to these birds.

Habitat is the foundation for birds’ survival. ABC works across vast landscapes in North America where many of our priority species breed. Working closely with the Migratory Bird Joint Ventures (JVs) and other partners, we have improved more than 10 million acres of bird habitats in the places where birds need us most — from the Great Lakes to the Chihuahuan Desert.

ABC participates in several management programs that benefit Red-headed Woodpeckers. As part of the Central Hardwoods Joint Venture (CHJV), ABC is helping to restore large acreages of natural communities. Through thinning and prescribed burns, we are supporting important habitats for this woodpecker, such as open oak and oak-pine woodlands.

Through the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, ABC is working with private landowners and forestry companies in the Southeastern U.S. to create and maintain habitat for Red-headed Woodpeckers. Foresters are encouraged to leave an adequate number and density of snags when forest stands are harvested, providing trees and open land good for the nesting woodpeckers. This program also benefits many other species, including the Reinita alidorada y Milano colilargo.

Red-headed Woodpeckers are more omnivorous than many woodpeckers, feeding on a wide variety of insects and other invertebrates, fruits, berries, and seeds, as well as nuts. Red-headed Woodpeckers drill into dead wood after insects in typical woodpecker fashion, but will also pluck prey from vegetation or the ground. Like the Lewis’s Woodpecker, the Red-headed Woodpecker is an accomplished catcher of flying insects, darting out from a stationary perch to capture them in mid-air, like a flycatcher.

The sexual behavior of this species mostly occurs in the immediate vicinity of the nest site. Mates will spend a surprising amount of time playing “peek-a-boo” while perched on a tree, repeatedly looking at each other around one side of the tree and then the other. Sometimes, the male will tap slowly on the inside of the nest cavity while the female does the same on the outside. Females will also mount males, termed “reversed mounting,” before the two switch places for copulation.

The male chooses a site to excavate the nest cavity on a dead branch or trunk, or a utility pole or fencepost in areas with fewer trees. He does most of the excavation, often incorporating an existing crack if available. These woodpeckers frequently use existing holes. Eggs are placed on a simple mound of wood chips from the interior of the cavity, which may be intentionally left behind; during excavation, they remove most of the wood chips, and females may add more wood chips as more eggs are laid.

Females typically lay five eggs, which both the male and female incubate. Both sexes develop areas of bare skin on their bellies, brood patches, which they use to warm the eggs and later the young. Eggs hatch after about two weeks of incubation, and both parents feed the hatchlings. Nestlings fledge after three or four weeks. Parents continue feeding their young, but may attempt to raise another brood, in which case they may chase off the juveniles from the previous brood.