Midwest bird watching
  • Home
  • Birds
    • Backyard Birds >
      • American Goldfinch
      • American Robin
      • Barn Swallow
      • Baltimore Oriole
      • Black-Capped Chickadee
      • Blue Jay
      • Carolina Chickadee
      • Dark-Eyed Junco
      • Downy Woodpecker
      • Eastern Bluebird
      • Hairy Woodpecker
      • House Wren
      • Mourning Dove
      • Northern Cardinal
      • Red-Winged Blackbird
      • Rose-Breasted Grosbeak
      • Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
      • White-Breasted Nuthatch
    • Non-Feeder birds >
      • Waterfowl
      • Wading Birds, Shorebirds & Gamebirds
      • Raptors
      • Doves, Cuckoos, Nighthawks & Whip-poor-will
      • Warblers
      • Small Non-Warbler Perching Birds
      • Woodpeckers & Kin
      • Sparrows & Kin
      • Swallows, Hummingbirds & Swifts
      • Blackbirds
  • Blog
  • Resources
    • Book Reviews
    • App Reviews
    • Free Downloads
    • Other Resources
  • Videos
  • Presentations
  • Photo gallery
  • Contact
  • Birding Locations
  • Checklist
  • Eliminate Predators
    • Cats
    • Others
  • Attracting Birds
    • Bird Feeders
    • Nesting Boxes
    • Plants
    • Food
    • Tools
    • Water Supply

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

7/13/2015

 
Picture
I have had the pleasure of helping to band a Red-bellied Woodpecker. Their size and the length of their beak may seem fearsome, but they are far less aggressive when being extracted from the net than a Northern Cardinal. Cardinals will grab your skin with their beak and twist it! 

I was in for a pleasant surprise with this bird: I got a close-up view of its tongue! It's one thing to see a Red-bellied Woodpecker use that amazing tongue at your feeder, but it's a far different thing when that tongue whips out right in front of you. The length is unbelievable: about three times the length of the bird's beak. It resembles a weapon from a fictional apocalyptic movie: a long spear with multiple barbs facing backward toward the throat (like a harpoon on steroids), ending with a sharp point on the end, and coated with a sticky substance. It is a perfectly designed tool for extracting insects from their burrows, able to reach into a narrow opening, blindly search for and locate insects, and pull the insects out using the barbs and goo. In the case of a grub, the the sharp end of the tongue may be used to skewer its prey. "En garde! Oops. Too late." 

The beak itself harbors another weapon, this time used against unsuspecting nuts. The woodpecker cracks open nuts by using its beak as a hammer and a tree as an anvil. Wedging the nut into a crevice in the bark, the woodpecker pounds on the nut with its beak until the nut's shell gives way.

Nuts are one of the bird's favorite foods, but the other is insects. The Red-bellied Woodpecker is a voracious predator of some of our most harmful insects. One tree can contain 1,000 adult Emerald Ash Borer beetles. Woodpeckers have been observed consuming 95% of the larvae before they can emerge as adults, making them a natural and native biological weapon against these invasive and expensive pests ("Emerald Ash Borer in North America: a research and regulatory challenge", Cappaert, et al., 2005). A friend of mine, birder and naturalist extraordinaire Jim McCormac, wrote about the increase in the Red-bellied Woodpecker and its relationship to the Emerald Ash Borer: http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2013/12/woodpeckers-boom-probably-because-of.html In Ohio where Mr. McCormac resides, the CBC totals in 2012 showed a 55% increase in population of Red-bellied Woodpeckers since 2003. Indiana's 114th CBC had record numbers of Red-bellied Woodpeckers: 1929 statewide.

Red-bellied Woodpeckers are also painfully aware that it is prudent to save for a rainy (or snowy) day. They store food to sustain them during times that meals are hard to find. 

Now let's discuss the elephant in the room: the misleading name. People often mistakenly call this a Red-headed Woodpecker. It does have a red head after all, but the true Red-headed Woodpecker has a far more spectacular red head, so it claims that name. But what about the "red belly"? It's not often that you can see the reddish color on the bird's stomach while in the field. If you look very closely, you might see a reddish patch with a yellowish wash on the belly that looks as if someone dropped a dollop of paint on the bird and made a poor effort of trying to wash it off.

The invasive European Starling has been a constant source of irritation for our native Red-bellied Woodpeckers, evicting the woodpeckers from their nest cavities about 50% of the time ("Nesting phenology and competition for nest sites among Red-headed and Red-bellied Woodpeckers and European Starlings", Ingold, 1989). This video of a battle between a Starling and a Red-bellied Woodpecker over a nest cavity will make you cringe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x5W9w-fxik


Comments are closed.

    Author

    Alex Forsythe

    Archives

    May 2020
    April 2020
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    October 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.