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What does a Red-headed Woodpecker look like?
Red-headed Woodpeckers are a medium sized bird slightly larger than a Robin. An adult Red-headed Woodpecker has its entire head, neck, and throat covered in bright crimson-red feathers. They have a white breast and belly with a solid black back and tail with white secondary wing feathers. Males and females are identical. Juveniles have a mottled gray-brown head, neck and back. Juveniles usually molt into their adult plumage by the next spring breeding season.
Are Red-headed Woodpeckers rare?
The Red-headed Woodpecker is listed as a Minnesota Species of Greatest Conservation Need due to a population decline of 95% since 1967. This has primarily been due to habitat loss, which includes loss of both nesting areas and food availability. The woodpeckers are not common, but can still be found throughout most of the state and region, often as individual pairs, and sometimes as a cluster of 3 to 4 pairs or rarely up to 50 pairs in a cluster.
Where can I find Red-headed Woodpeckers?
Red-headed Woodpeckers require dead trees (90+%) with soft heartwood for nests and roosts, with live trees nearby. Their nesting habitats include oak savannah, wetland sloughs, open woods with partial open canopies, storm blowdowns, and small open woodlots. They require access to a plentiful invertebrate food supply, and usually like wetlands nearby.
What do Red-headed Woodpeckers eat?
In the summer Red-headed Woodpeckers primarily (95%) eat invertebrates captured by flycatching and gleaning. For example, dragonflies, butterflies, and grasshoppers. In the winter Red-headed Woodpeckers in northern areas primarily eat (95%) acorns and other nuts they cache for winter food. They will readily come to bird feeders, especially suet, year-round.
How many eggs and nestlings are in Red-headed Woodpecker nests?
Red-headed Woodpeckers lay 3-7 pure white eggs in their nest cavities. The eggs are incubated for about 12 days, and incubation may begin the day before the last egg is laid. Nestlings fledge about 30 days after hatching. There is an average brood reduction from the number of eggs laid to the number of fledglings of about 50% for successful nests. This is true for almost all nests.
What are Red-headed Woodpeckers nests like and where are they found?
Over 90% of Red-headed Woodpecker nests are found in dead trees or dead branches of live trees. They need trees with soft heartwood, usually softened by heart-rot fungus, the fruiting bodies of which can often be seen on the tree, Nest cavities are 5 to 75 feet high on the tree. The cavity hole is usually 2 inches in diameter and about 12 inches deep. The cavity is gourd shaped inside, with a wide sill and narrow neck at the top. Tree condition and location are more important to Red-headed Woodpeckers than tree species when they are locating their nest trees.
How long do Red-headed Woodpeckers live?
While a few banded Red-headed Woodpeckers have been recorded to have lived in the wild for nine to eleven years, the average recorded lifespan (also of wild banded birds) is around four years.
Do Red-headed Woodpeckers migrate?
Red-headed Woodpeckers are facultative migrants, meaning that some years they migrate and some years they don’t. In Minnesota, if the winter supply of specific acorn species is plentiful, they will not migrate, and if the same acorn crop is very low, they will migrate south.
What animals are predators of Red-headed Woodpeckers?
Red-headed Woodpecker predators vary depending on nesting and roosting area and habitat. Recorded predators include Bull Snakes, Southern Flying Squirrels (kill nestlings to usurp cavity), Raccoons, Fishers, Mink, Great-horned Owls, Red-shouldered Hawks, Merlins, American Kestrels, Red-tailed Hawks, and Cooper’s Hawks.