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The Downy Woodpecker
The Downy Woodpecker (Dendrocopos pubescens), in its various races,
inhabits most of the timbered country of North America from Alaska to
Florida. It lives in open woodlands, and is a familiar species that comes
regularly to orchards, wood lots, parks, and shade trees of our dooryards.
When approached, instead of flying away, it often works around to the other
side of the tree or limb up which it may be climbing. One of our most useful
woodpeckers, it eats the larvae of bark and wood-boring beetles, insect eggs,
ants, scale insects, and larvae of the coddling moth.
In the spring, the downy woodpecker mates and chisels a nest cavity in a
dead tree where the wood is not too hard. From four to seven glossy white
eggs are laid, with no other nesting material than a few chips left from
the work of excavation. Fourteen days of incubation are required for the
eggs to hatch.
Old nest holes are used as sleeping quarters, but the birds are solitary
most of the year and often drill winter nests to sleep in, as there are not
enough old nest holes to go around. The locations of these nest holes may
sometimes be detected by bits of wood lying on the ground near the selected
tree.
The ordinary call of the downy woodpecker is a rapid whinny of notes,
descending in pitch. The note, a flat "pick", is not as sharp as the
Hairy's note.
Woodpeckers are destroyers of insects, many of which are injurious to
mankind, and wise is the farmer or fruit grower who never kills them through
the mistaken belief that their pecking is detrimental to his trees.
In "Out of Doors in the West", Dr. J. H. Paul writes, "The larger tree
savers, the woodpeckers, are our tree surgeons. Human senses cannot locate
the tree borers; only Nature's tree surgeon can discover these pests; and
only that marvelous surgical instrument, the woodpecker's bill, which is
hammer, pick-axe, chisel, and auger combined, can lay open the right place;
and only that long, extensible, barbed and sticky tongue coiled up almost
around the skull, on the hyoid bone, can pierce and search the burrow, to
drag the grub from its den. All trees have insect enemies. Over six hundred
kinds of American forest trees are saved by the skillful surgery of the
woodpeckers. It is only in dead or decaying trunks that woodpeckers dig deep
holes for nesting purposes. They nest in a dead trunk a number of feet from
the ground. Generally the hole is used one season, but the abandoned holes
are used by many birds including the chickadees, bluebirds, screech owls
and starlings." (The kestrel, or sparrow hawk, also uses the holes for
nesting.)
The Downy most frequently seen in our region stays with us the year round.
It and the Hairy are alike in color; the Hairy is larger -- 8 1/2 inches to
10 1/2 inches -- and the bill is large. The Downy is 6 to 7 inches, and has
a small bill. They are the only common woodpeckers with clear white backs;
their entire bottoms are also white. They are almost identical in pattern,
spotted with white on the wings; males with a small red patch on the back
of the head, females without. The Downy at close range shows spots on outer
tail feathers; the small bill is the best characteristic.
It is indeed a real enjoyment to watch four of these beautiful birds clinging
to, and feeding daily from suet logs hanging from tree branches in our yard.
-- by Marie L. Atkinson
SOURCE:
National Geographic,
"Woodpeckers, Friends of Our Forests",
by T. Gilbert Pearson
Identification Tips
A Colored Photograph
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