Red-Headed Woodpecker

Fascinating facts about the Red-Headed Woodpecker

• A red-headed woodpecker can stretch from 19 cm to 25 cm long, about the length of a school ruler, and its wings span roughly 42.5 cm, the width of a large dinner plate. It weighs between 56 g and 97 g, with most adults hovering around 76 g, comparable to a small apple. Each wing measures 12.7-15 cm, the tail 6.6-8.5 cm, the bill 2.1-3 cm and the tarsus 1.9-2.5 cm. These precise dimensions show how a bird the size of a handheld game console can still hammer into trees with a beak the length of a fingernail, a key to its cavity-making lifestyle.
• Only three other woodpeckers stash food, yet the red-headed woodpecker does it too, stuffing insects, seeds and nuts into tree cavities, bark crevices or even under bark. This caching habit lets it survive lean winter months, turning a simple foraging bird into a tiny pantry manager. By sealing some caches with wood chips, it protects its hidden stores from scavengers.
• From 1966 to 2015 the species lost more than 1.5 % of its numbers each year across the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys and central Florida, adding up to a 65.5 % drop over four decades. That steep decline pushed it to near-threatened status in 2004, but increased habitat management helped stabilize the trend, and in 2018 the IUCN lifted it back to least concern. The swing illustrates how targeted land-care can reverse a long-term population slide, turning a bird once on the brink into a hopeful conservation success story.
• When a pair selects a nesting spot, the cavity they excavate can be 20 cm to 60 cm deep, with an entrance 5-6 cm wide that widens to almost double inside. The male does most of the drilling, carving out a space that often ends up in dead trees or on utility poles 2.45 m to 24.5 m above ground.
• By carving out cavities, red-headed woodpeckers provide ready-made homes for other species that cannot make their own holes.

Sources

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

• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Cornell Lab, All About Birds
• Wikipedia
• Animal Diversity Web

At a glance

About the Red-Headed Woodpecker

As the Red-Headed Woodpecker takes to the sky, its fiery crown blazing like a wildfire against the emerald canopy, it embodies a spirit of unbridled energy, its rapid wingbeats a testament to its relentless pursuit of insect prey. With each swift, agile maneuver, it weaves a mesmerizing dance through the trees, its chisel-tipped beak probing the hidden recesses of bark and branch with precision and purpose. In its wake, the woodpecker leaves a trail of tiny, telling excavations, a topographic map of its unyielding quest for sustenance in a world of ancient, sun-dappled forests.

Red-Headed Woodpecker photographed on Feravox

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