A strikingly beautiful bird, the Red-headed Woodpecker is difficult to misidentify, with its brilliant scarlet head, black back and a flash of white as it wings. Immatures look much different. They have a similar profile, but are dark on head, throat and upper breast. Distributed through all of Minnesota, save for the boreal forests of the Arrowhead, this woodpecker has become, nonetheless, a rare treat to encounter.
The woodpeckers prefer deciduous woodlands with a clear understory. Pristine oak savannahs are prime habitat and provide the birds with a favored food, acorns. But a pristine habitat is not necessary. An old farmer once told me that red-headed woodpeckers were the most common woodpecker in Chisago County in his youth, the 1930s and 1940s when more of the county was under cultivation than is today.
It seems their population has fluctuated since European settlement. T. S. Roberts observed that they mainly migrated into the state to breed, but noted that they were most common in that part of Minnesota that had been long-settled and cultivated. A number of factors contribute to their increasing scarcity, including the removal of dead trees (favored nest sites), and the bird’s heedlessness of motor vehicles. Roberts stated in 1932 that it was among the most frequently killed bird by automobiles, at a time when cars had been on the roads only about a decade. In the eastern part of North America, they were adversely affected by the chestnut blight, which took out a major food source, and Dutch elm disease. At the same time, these two massive die-offs produced numerous nesting sites. Nonetheless, the decline of the woodpeckers has continued into present times. Overall in North America they have declined 2% per year from 1966-2014.
Red-headed Woodpeckers are appealing birds to watch. In addition to foraging for insects on trees like other woodpeckers, they catch winged insects on the fly, sallying off a branch like a kingbird. Two-thirds of their diet consists of fruit and seeds, unlike other members of the family. They will also eat other birds’ eggs and even mice. Roberts observed they have a “bad habit” of eating honey bees. They cache food under bark, or in crevices of tree branches and under shingles. They have been seen caching live grasshoppers, wedging them tightly so they can’t escape!
Red-headed Woodpeckers are primary cavity nesters, meaning that they excavate their own nest, and may use it for several years. Abandoned cavities then become roost and nest sites for chickadees, nuthatches, smaller woodpeckers and others. Red-headeds utilize dead trees or dead limbs of live trees, and the cavities may be sited high, thirty feet above the ground. Mates share nest duties, and often remain together for several years. Once the juveniles have fledged, the birds remain in the area, traveling to particularly good acorn masts rather than migrating south.
For more information, visit the Cornell University webpage :https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-headed_Woodpecker/id.
For information on the status of the birds in Minnesota, see: https://mnbirdatlas.org/species/red-headed-woodpecker/
The Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery Project
In 2006, in response to the drastic decline of red-headed woodpeckers (RHWO), some members of the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis formed a committee to address the problem. Some of them had been involved in the wildly successful Bluebird Recovery Program. Like bluebirds, red-headed woodpeckers are cavity nesters, If the woodpeckers could be coaxed into accepting artificial nest boxes as the bluebirds had, the problem, it seemed, would be half-solved. At least, a decline in birds might be halted. They called the group the Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery Project. (https://www.redheadrecovery.org)
Thus began an endeavor to understand what had seemed a straightforward problem, and quickly became a quest to find the elusive key to their survival.
The birds had become so uncommon that the first goal of the program was to locate nests, enough nests so that statistical analysis of data would be meaningful. The committee also honed in on two reasons that the birds had become so rare: oak savannah, the preferred habitat, had become almost non-existent; and standing dead trees—snags—that the birds nested in, were being cut down as humans “tidied up” property. “Save Our Snags” became a slogan of the project.
The first field season, volunteers set out nest boxes, a trial design, in what seemed good habitat, even though no woodpecker researcher had ever seen a bird use an artificial nest box. The results? Exactly zero red-headed woodpeckers used them. The volunteers did not immediately give up on the idea of artificial boxes, but that same year, some of them had toured the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin and seen that oak savannah restoration had resulted in 70 nesting pairs of woodpeckers—a lot of them. The group began to explore Best Management Practices for encouraging nesting in the wild.
Through these early efforts, they realized that basic biology information on red-headed woodpeckers was lacking. The focus widened to recording nesting behavior, including location of nests, number of eggs laid, hatching and fledging success, etc. In the fall of 2007, the volunteers visited Cedar Creek Natural History Area (now Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve) and discovered 21 RHWO, the largest concentration in Minnesota and that became the locus of their attention. Connected to the University of Minnesota, it had been a research facility since the 1930s, so this was a happy circumstance.
In the 13 years since, the committee has received small grants, hired researchers, published papers, given national talks, and uncovered much that was unknown about the once-common birds. The same persistent volunteers acting as citizen scientists are still the driving force of the research today. They are always in need of donations, and willing workers to collect data. They are pursuing funding for electronic tracking devices to provide information on the movement of individuals. Individuals or groups donating $150 or more can “name” a bird.
Membership in the Red-headed Woodpecker Project is $20 a year; members receive the excellent newsletter The Redhead four times a year. To read past issues of The Redhead, go to https://www.redheadrecovery.org/the-redhead-newsletter/
The same folks that are the backbone of the RHWO Recovery Project are also the ones monitoring the bird kill of the Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis, so they are busy, incredibly dedicated volunteers. Our chapter plans to invite one of their members to speak at a Birds and Beer event, so stay tuned! If every declining species had such a supportive project behind it, the future would be bright for our birds.
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