Hairy Woodpecker

Fascinating facts about the Hairy Woodpecker

• At just under a foot long, the hairy woodpecker stretches to about 250 mm (9.8 in) and fans a 380 mm (15 in) wingspan. Its body mass ranges from 40 g to 95 g (1.4-3.4 oz). Those dimensions make it noticeably bigger than its look-alike, the downy woodpecker.
• The first scientific portrait of the hairy woodpecker appeared in Mark Catesby's early 18th-century natural history plates, and Carl Linnaeus later gave it the name Picus villosus in the 1766 twelfth edition of Systema Naturae. The specific epithet "villosus" simply means "hairy" in Latin, echoing the bird's shaggy appearance. After bouncing between the genera Dendrocopos and Picoides, a 2015 DNA study showed those groups weren't true clades, prompting taxonomists to move the species into Leuconotopicus, a genus erected by Alfred Malherbe in 1845. This reshuffling underscores how modern genetics can rewrite centuries-old classifications.
• Despite looking almost identical to the much smaller downy woodpecker, same black-and-white pattern, same white eye bars, the two are not close relatives; their similarity is a textbook case of convergent evolution. The only reliable field clue is the downy's shorter bill relative to head size, and the presence of white spots on the downy's tail feathers, which the hairy lacks.
• When hunting, hairy woodpeckers hammer bark and pry open crevices to snag insects, but they also supplement their diet with fruits, berries, nuts and occasional tree sap. Notably, they prey on the European corn borer, a moth that costs U.S. agriculture over $1 billion each year in crop losses and control measures.
• Nearly nine million hairy woodpeckers were counted in 2020, a population size that keeps the species firmly in the IUCN's "least concern" bucket.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Hairy Woodpecker

In the shadowy recesses of North America's forests, the Hairy Woodpecker drums out a rhythmic melody, its percussive beat echoing through the trees as it excavates insects from the bark with its chisel-tipped beak. With a flick of its black-and-white tail, this diminutive dynamo flits from trunk to trunk, its crimson crown a fleeting splash of color against the muted tones of the woodland. As it moves with purpose, its sturdy, claw-tipped feet gripping the rough bark with ease, the Hairy Woodpecker embodies a whirlwind of energy and industry, a true master of its arboreal domain.

Hairy Woodpecker photographed on Feravox

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