Hairy, left, and downy woodpeckers are common sights at our bird feeders.
Photo: Wiki Commons
Woodpeckers Rank High on the Pecking Order
By Kevin McKeon, Maine Master Naturalist
There are nine species of woodpeckers found in Maine, and while some have evolved to survive Maine’s sometimes harsh winters, others are already returning from points south to claim and defend territories, nest, and raise their young. Their presence is indicative of a healthy ecosystem, and woodpeckers are welcomed to our neighborhoods as a keystone species. Their hole-building activities create nesting and sheltering cavities for many other critters that aren’t able to make these holes. Many tree-attacking pests are gobbled up by them, and the woodpeckers thrive in the presence of valuable snags (dead, standing trees), which provide habitat for four times as much biological life as live trees.
Many folks get extra pleasure from knowing what they’re looking at, so here’s a little bit about our local woodpeckers — and some not so local. Hanging a couple of suet cakes in your backyard will attract all these birds and many others. It’s also a good way to relate to the term “pecking order,” as the larger birds make the smaller ones wait their turn! Woodpeckers have specialized adaptations for feeding and for protecting their brains from the powerful pecking forces, which will be a subject in a future Out in the Woods column. For a deeper dive into birds of all kinds, Cornell Lab’s website is a premier destination.
About the only difference between our downy, (Picoides pubescens), and hairy, (Picoides villosus) woodpeckers is their size; the downy is about 7 inches tall, and the hairy 10 inches; the hairy’s bill is a bit proportionally longer than the downy’s. But once the difference is observed, it’s surprisingly easy to ID them at our feeders, which they tend to frequent more than other woodpeckers.
Red-bellied woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) announce their presence with screeching, trembling cawing and intermittent loud pecking, telling the area that it’s their territory and that they’re ready for female companionship and nest-building. These guys are among the loudest around here, actively calling and screeching year-round — at least, in my backyard!
Most of our woodpeckers do what their name tells them to do — peck on wood — and the yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) does what its name tells it to do — suck on tree sap (or more accurately, lap it up). Trees with many tiny holes, grouped together in neat rows and levels, are the signs that a sapsucker has been here — and may very well return. These woodpeckers can be the bane of orchardists, as they can drill many holes along the tree’s bark, opening wounds for diseases and sometimes killing it with so many holes that the sap gets cut off from feeding the tree, effectively strangling it. But their sap-oozing holes are a valuable food source for early season pollinators like bees, butterflies, and even hummingbirds; bats and porcupines also visit the oozing holes, as do many other birds and amphibians attracted to insects that the sap lures in.
Our northern flicker (Colaptes auratus) is primarily a ground feeder, hammering into the soil for grubs, ants, and beetles. Its tell-tale ID is its tail: You’ll easily notice a white patch just above its tail when taking flight, and a touch of yellow under its tail — hence a further descriptor in its name, “yellow-shafted“ northern flicker.
About the same size as the flicker is the red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). It doesn’t have much of a red belly, just a bit of a reddish splash, but it does have a striking reddish-orange band over its head running down to its back.
There’s also the red-headed woodpecker, (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), and this guy has an obviously and completely red head, bright white breast, and dark-gray shoulders. These are a bit rare, but the species is following the warming climate to our area. They do very little wood pecking, preferring to eat nuts, berries, and flying insects.
Two other, rare-to-this-area woodpeckers are the three-toed (Picoides tridactylus), black-backed (Picoides arcticus) woodpeckers. These birds like to live in boreal, sub-arctic, and mountainous northern forests, and specialize in foraging for wood-boring beetles, especially in large, fire-scarred trees. Most other woodpeckers have four toes or talons, but these 9- to 10-inch birds have three.
Described by many folks as the most strikingly beautiful woodpecker due to not only its color but also its large size and zippy flight pattern is the pileated (Dryocopus pileatus) woodpecker, Maine’s and North America’s largest woodpecker at about 18 inches tall, the second biggest on Earth. Two larger ones are considered extinct, and the great salty woodpecker is just a tad fatter. Pileateds look like a jet flying through forests and land aggressively upon their forage tree with a meaningful grasp — looking to announce to the tree that “I’m here, and ready to eat!” Woody Woodpecker is modeled after the pileated. He and his mate Winnie, niece Splinter, and nephew Knothead entered the cartoon business in 1940, and Netflix released “Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp” in 2024.
The Lenape people, considered the grandfathers of the Algonquian cultures, tell the tale of Woodpecker who ate the grubs that were killing Maple Tree. To reward Woodpecker, Maple Tree allowed him to drink his nutritious sweet sap during a deadly drought. The Lenape, seeing this, learned to tap maple trees for making syrup. Thus was born the lesson of reciprocity and mutual respect.
Snags: https://sanfordspringvalenews.com/out-in-the-woods-12/
Cornell Lab: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/
Pileated woodpecker: https://sanfordspringvalenews.com/out-in-the-woods-17/
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