Zebra pattern plus red bellies, caps and necks mean you’re seeing a ... Red-Bellied Woodpecker

By Sara Scudier

Ohio certified volunteer naturalist

The red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) is a robin-sized bird that lives in a wide range of habitats and eats a varied range of foods. It is an ecological generalist able to thrive in forests, parks and suburban yards.

Red-bellied woodpeckers are distinguished from other North American woodpeckers by the black-and-white zebra pattern on their backs, and the red belly. Male red-bellied woodpeckers have a bright red cap that covers from the forehead to the nape of the neck. Females have red only on the napes of their necks. The name “red-bellied” inevitably strikes a casual observer as incredibly inappropriate. “Red-capped” or “red-necked” would seem to be more apt descriptions of this species.

Red-bellied woodpeckers are found in the eastern half of the United States. Their range extends east from the wooded portion of the Great Plains states to the Atlantic coast and from the Gulf of Mexico to southern portions of Ontario and northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and New York.

The red-bellied woodpecker’s diet includes fruit, seeds, nuts, grains – even tree sap – as well as a wide range of invertebrates including ants, grasshoppers, beetle larvae, flies and many types of caterpillars. They also eat small vertebrates including lizards, snakes, frogs, fish, nestling birds and bird eggs. They vigorously forage on the trunks and large limbs of trees and opportunistically consume any food or prey item they encounter. Their long, sticky tongues are well adapted to both grabbing food and to probing deeply into existing and freshly chiseled cracks in the wood of their trees. Larger prey may be broken up into bite-sized morsels by beating the seized organism against a hard surface. They cache food (corn, fruit, seeds, and even insects) in cracks and crevices of trees and fence posts. In the winter, these cached food reserves may represent a significant component of the bird’s daily diet.

These woodpeckers are a very vocal species throughout the year, though they are most noisy during the breeding season. Red-bellied woodpeckers use six calls to communicate. They also communicate by drumming on dead trees, dead stubs and utility poles with their beaks. Drumming is used to announce ownership of a territory and in pair bond formation and maintenance.

Red-bellied woodpeckers form mating pairs in the late winter and nest between March and early May. They lay their eggs on the bed of wood chips left over after excavating their nest cavity. Their nests are in dead trees, dead limbs of live trees and fence posts. The same pair may nest in the same tree year after year, but typically excavate a new cavity each year, often placing the new one beneath the previous year’s.

To learn more about this and other woodpeckers in your backyard, go to http://go.osu.edu/woodpeckers.