Educate Yourself About the Downy Woodpecker and Other Woodpeckers
Downy Woodpecker
The Downy Woodpecker has a dainty, short bill, sparrow sized body, white back, and black-and-white patterned wings. Its length is 6in (15cm) Its wingspan is 12in (30cm) Its voice is a rapid whinny of calls, descending in a pitch; the call is a flat “pick”. Their eggs are pure white, with 1 clutch in the north, and sometimes 2 in the south, consisting of 4-5 o (3-6) eggs. Both male and female incubate for 12 days, and fledging time is about 20-25 days. Both male and female feed their young. Male and female look alike, except for the male’s head marking.
The Downy Woodpecker will be the attention getter of all birds, by its wild racket of sometimes drumming on a metal roof early in the morning, or a persistent whack and hammer on a tree trunk. But he does not only do this for fun, it is his way of telling neighboring woodpeckers of the boundaries of its territory. They also communicate with vocalizations of rattles, whoops, and squawks.
The Downy Woodpecker is the smallest, and the most common woodpecker in North America, except for a few areas in the Southwest. They are very similar to the robin-sized Hairy Woodpecker, but for a much smaller beak, and both males have a red patch on the back of the head. The Downy Woodpecker has short legs, with two toes pointed forward, and two pointed backwards, witch makes this bird perfect for clinging to the bark of a tree. They also have tail feathers, where the points are so stiff, they can puncture paper, witch helps to balance and brace the woodpecker, for hours of whacking and hammering.
The process of excavation and extracting of fly larvae, is done by hanging on to the stems of goldenrod, and determining the quality of the fly larvae, by tapping on the ball-shaped galls, and listen for a response with their sharp hearing. Woodpeckers have a huge appetite for suet, and that probably comes from their great fondness of insect larvae witch are both high in fat. The woodpeckers also have sticky, saliva coated tongues, and tipped with barbs and bristles, twice as long as the beak, witch they probe into cavities searching for larvae.
You would figure that these guys, would fly around with a major headache all the time, with all that hammering, but their skulls are extra thick, and very strong muscles around the scull and beak, absorbs most of the shock of the pounding. It is also good to know that without our woodpeckers, our trees would not be as healthy as they are, because of its love for pests like ants, caterpillars, flies, aphids, and adults of wood-boring beetles.
Pairs usually get together in late winter, long before they mate, and will stay together for the rest of the winter, with the male showing a strong dominance over the female. Woodpeckers usually prefer to excavate in treetops, where the bark is thinner, and easier to hammer deeper holes, but the male will often chase the female away, forcing her to feed lower down on the tree.
Also, during late winter months, when food is scares, the pair will sometimes split up for a while witch lets the female eat at better spots. They will also show tension amongst each other at your bird feeding stations in your lovely bird feeding garden. But all this bad behavior from the male usually ends, when spring is around the corner, and they will reunite and become more territorial together.
When there is time to build a nest, they chisel the hole with their beaks, witch can take up to three weeks, depending on how thick, and hard the wood is. They will usually use a dead branch or snag year after year witch will end up riddled with nest holes, but will prefer not to use the same hole for the next nesting season, witch allows another tenant to move in. Sometimes woodpeckers will accept a nest box, if it is mounted on a tree, and is the right size.
If you like to attract the Downy Woodpecker to your lovely bird feeding garden, hang raw beef-kidney suet in a mesh bag, or a commercial one, and they love a nice helping of peanut butter and sunflower seeds too. Remember not to put out any suet, when temperatures are high above freezing since this can stain their feathers when the suet turns rancid.
