Habitat: Red-headed woodpeckers prefer to nest and roost in open areas. Farmyards, field edges, and timber stands that have been treated with herbicides or burned are preferred habitats. Redheads are attracted to areas with many dead snags and lush herbaceous ground cover, but not to woods with closed canopies. They are found throughout the East and along wooded streams of the prairie to eastern Colorado and Wyoming. Competition for nesting space is often intensive where starlings are abundant (Bailey and Niedrach 1965).
Nest: Red-headed woodpeckers most commonly excavate holes in the trunks of dead trees. Holes are excavated from 24 to 65 feet above the ground and the 1.8-inch diameter entrance hole often faces south or west (Reller 1972). These woodpeckers may excavate new holes each year, or use old nest sites.
Food: Red-headed woodpeckers consume about half animal matter (mostly insects) and half vegetable matter. Occasionally the eggs or the young of other birds are destroyed. Although a wide variety of vegetable matter is consumed, acorns from pin oak comprise a large portion of the winter diet. Nuts are stored whole or in pieces in cracks and crevices in bark, and in cavities which are sealed with bits of bark when full. These birds also store insects (especially grasshoppers) along with acorns in cavities and crevices (Kilham 1963, Bent 1939).
Acorn woodpecker
Melanerpes formicivorus
L 8″
Habitat: The acorn woodpecker is a common resident of mixed oak-pine woodland and adjacent open grassland from Oregon along the Pacific Coast to the southwestern United States.
Nest: Acorn woodpeckers are communal nesters, and the young are fed by the entire group (Wetmore 1964). They usually excavate holes in ponderosa pine, but live and dead oaks of various species, sycamore, cottonwood, and willow are also used for nests. Their old holes are important for secondary cavity nesters such as small owls, purple martins, violet-green swallows, nuthatches, house wrens, and kestrels (Bent 1939).
Food: As the name implies, acorn woodpeckers feed mostly on acorns which are stored in holes drilled in communal trees. Sap from several species of oaks also is consumed from midwinter to summer (MacRoberts and MacRoberts 1972). About 25 percent of the diet is insects, including grasshoppers, ants, beetles, and flies (Bent 1939). Almonds, walnuts, and pecans are eaten when they are available.