Red-cockaded Woodpecker

The Red-cockaded Woodpecker has black and white barring on the back, a black cap, and a white cheek patch.

Male has Rred tufts on the side of the head are difficult to see.

Female. © Greg Lavaty

Lacks red tufts on the sides of the head.

None.

Juveniles resemble adults.

Mature pine woodlands.

Insects.

Forages on tree trunks by flaking off bits of bark.

Resident in isolated parts of the southeastern U.S.

Red-cockaded Woodpeckers usually excavate nests in live rather than dead trees, and will use the same cavity for many years.

Both males and females will attack intruders near the nest.

Among several calls is a raspy “churt”.

Red-cockaded Woodpeckers will use properly constructed and situated artificial cavities.

The nest is in a cavity of a live pine with pine resin oozing out around the entrance.

Eggs:  3-4.  Color: White.

Incubation and fledging:
– Young hatch at 10-11 days.
– Young fledge (leave the nest) in 26-29 days after hatching but remain with the adults for some time.

Published by the Smithsonian Institution between the 1920s and the 1950s, the Bent life history series of monographs provide an often colorful description of the birds of North America. Arthur Cleveland Bent was the lead author for the series. The Bent series is a great resource and often includes quotes from early American Ornithologists, including Audubon, Townsend, Wilson, Sutton and many others.

Bent Life History for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker – the common name and sub-species reflect the nomenclature in use at the time the description was written.

Introduced to ornithology by Wilson under the name of Picus querulus, the red-cockaded woodpecker is locally common throughout the open pine country of the South Atlantic and Gulf States and extends its range into the pine country of Oklahoma and Missouri. Its preference is very definitely for the open woods, shunning the dense thickets of second-growth pine and the deep recesses of the cypress swamps even when the latter are only a few hundred yards away from its chosen environment. These open pine woods, which abound both in the Austro-Riparian and Carolinian Zones of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, represent not a normal growth of pine forest but an original pine forest modified by the pernicious custom of annually burning the woods under the impression that in that way next year’s pasturage will be improved.

As a result, the younger trees and seedlings are killed off. Only the hardier and more resistant survivors remain, so that there is little or no underbrush and the general appearance of these woods is more that of an open glade or park than of typical pine forest. William Brewster (1882) comments on the character of these forests as follows: “The pine lands of the South have an open park-like character that is a continual surprise to one accustomed only to New England forests. The trees rarely stand in close proximity to one another, and they are often so widely scattered that the general effect is that of an opening rather than a forest.” These pines are chiefly Pinus palustrts Miller, Pinus ellioti Engelmann, and Pinus taeda Linnaeus.

From many sections of the South where it was formerly common, the red-cockaded woodpecker has disappeared by reason of the ruthless destruction of pine forests by the lumbermen. When the large timber is cut out, the birds leave the locality and apparently do not return. However, there is still a considerable amount of pine forest suitable for its nesting that is held in private hands and not about to be destroyed. In fact, such timber holdings are largely on the increase, particularly in the “low country” of South Carolina and Georgia and in certain zones around Thomasville, Ga., and Aiken, S. C., where vast tracts are being conserved by private ownership as game refuges and shooting preserves.

There is also a very considerable amount of intelligent r~forestation being carried out, which in time will also furnish adequate and suitable breeding grounds. This species is so highly specialized at least in the South Atlantic States in its habits and its choice of environment that the destruction of the pine forests would probably put its existence in serious jeopardy.

Nesting: Audubon (1842) stated that “the nest is not unfrequently bored in a decayed stump about thirty feet high.” G. W. Morse (1927) found the bird nesting in a willow tree in a pasture in Oklahoma. M. G. Vaiden (MS.) reports from Collins, Miss., the taking of a nest from a pine tree, the top of which was dead and the nest hole about 8 feet from the top. Arthur T. Wayne (1906), who has probably had more intimate experience with this bird than any other observer, states:

I have seen perhaps a thousand holes in which this woodpecker had bred or was breeding, and every one was excavated in a living piae tree, ranging from eighteen to one hundred feet above the ground. This bird never lays its eggs until the pine gum pours freely from beneath and around the hole, and in order to accelerate the flow the birds puncture the bark to die “skin” of the tree thereby causing the gum to exude freely. This species, unlike the Pileated Woodpecker, returns to the same hole year after year until it can no longer make the gum exude. But like the Pileated Woodpecker, It is much attached to the t.ree in which it has first made its nest, and as long as it can find a suitable spot It will continue to excavate new holes until the tree is kiflcd by this process of boring. I have frequently counted as many as four holes in one tree, and in two instances I have seen as many as eight. These birds seem to know by instinct that the center of the tree is rotten, or what lumber men call “blackheart,” and they never make a mistake when selecting a tree! The hole is bored through the solid wood, generally a little upward, and to the center of the tree (which is always rotten).

The overwhelming majority of observers who have studied the redcockaded woodpecker in its normal habitat concur in the opinion that the site of selection for the nest hole is in a living pine that, however, has begun to rot at the core, and this condition of the heart of the tree the birds seem to be able to discern with unfailing accuracy. All the nests I have seen and studied were in living pines, and other ornithologists have made similar observations. T. Gilbert Pearson (1909) says: “So far as I have observed, always excavated in the trunk of a living pine tree. The site chosen varies from twenty-five to fifty feet from the earth.” H. L. Harllee (MS.), of Florence, S. C., writes: “It nests in the same hole each year in close proximity to several pairs, usually from two to four.” The observations of Gilbert R. Rossignol (MS.), writing from Savannah, Ga., agree with the foregoing. He states: “Before the lumberman invaded our great pine forests, the red-cockaded was fairly common, for I have found 10 or 12 pairs nesting in a 50-acre tract, provided, of course, that the pine trees were not too close to one another. These little woodpeckers did not like dark heavily timbered forests. The bird~ drills a hole in a living pine ranging from 25 to 80 or more feet high, and it is almost impossible to get the eggs without full equipment. It takes a brace and bit to bore holes a little above where you think the bottom of the nest is located, and then sometimes you strike below it, or again right into it on an incomplete set or no eggs at all. The eggs I have found were always more or less sticky with pine gum. This bird will nest in the same hole for several years and use the same tree probably during its entire life, but if the tree dies, or the gum does not flow freely, the birds will desert their old home.” Henry Nehrling (1882), writing from Texas, states that “it usually excavates its nesting sites in deciduous trees,” and E. A. Mcllhenny (Bendire, 1895) that “in southern Louisiana it generally nests in willow and china trees.” The nesting hole is bored usually slightly upward for several inches then straight through into the softei~ unsound heart of the tree and downward. fer 8 inches to a foot or more. The nest cavity is gourd-shaped, and the eggs are laid upon fine chips and debris in the bottom of the cavity. The most striking thing about the nesting site, however, is due to the bird’s custom of drilling numerous small holes through the bark of the tree until the resin exudes freely. This glazed patch of gum around the nesting hole is unmistakable and when once seen becomes an easy landmark for the location of the nests, inasmuch as it may be discerned through the open woods for a distance of several hundred yards. During the period of incubation, the birds are a sorry spectacle, the abdomen being largely denuded of feathers, as is customary with many birds, and the breast feathers from the clavicle to the end of the sternum begaumed and matted together with resin, and, in fact, they remain permanently unfit to be taken as specimens until the next molting has been completed.

The nidification is earlier along the coast and southward than in t.he interior and toward the northern limits of its range, beginning sometimes as early as February, but the major nesting season may be said to be the last week in April and the first week in May.

S. A. Grimes tells us that old nests of this species are used by redbellied and red-headed woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, bluebirds, crested flycatchers, and flying squirrels.

Eggs: The eggs vary from three to five in number, the latter being unusual; they are elliptically ovate in shape, pure glossy white, and semitranslucent when fresh. Not infrequently they are stained or smeared with resin from the breast feathers of the incubating bird. As a rule only one brood is raised in a season unless the first set has been taken, and both parents participate in incubation. There is some evidence tending to show that the eggs and even the unfledged young are sometimes thrown out of the nest by the birds when it has been disturbed.

The measurements of 50 eggs average 24.04 by 17.86 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 26.42 by 18.54, 26.4 by 19.8, 21.38 by 17.46, and 23.77 by 16.66 millimeters.

Plumages: The young in their first plumage bear the general color pattern of the adults with this important exception: the young male has a dull crimson oval central crown patch. However, while the pattern is identical with that of adult birds, the black is replaced by a dark sepia merging at times into an aniline black, and the bluish gloss evident on the crowns of the mature birds is lacking. Similarly, the feathers of the cheek patch in both sexes lack the 6ne silky gloss and texture that are later attained. The underparts show uniformly a huffy or ochraceous wash everywhere, and the barring of the tail is more pronounced. During this phase, the plumage is much softer and looser than it subsequently becomes.

With the first molt, the red crown patch is lost.

It is the belief of the writer, without sufficient specimens properly to verify it, that the cockades of the full adult male plumage are not attained until at least the third molt. Without careful dissection and sex determination of the immature birds, a fact notoriously difficult to the average ornithologist, the young of both sexes, after the crown patch is lost and the cockades have not appeared, would be indistinguishable.

Food: The food, like that of most woodpeckers, consists primarily of larvae of various wood-boring insects, although beetles and grubs of other kinds as well as ants, grasshoppers, crickets, and caterpillars are frequently taken. An interesting habit of the red-cockaded woodpecker is that of going into the cornfields throughout the South at the time when the corn is at the roasting-ear stage and when many of the ears are infested with a worm that damages the grain to a very considerable extent. This habit is reported by Billy ‘Ward (1930), of Timmonsville, S. C., and by Edward Dingle (1920), of Mount Pleasant, S. C., who says, “The Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Pitreno pious borealis) is very commonly found in cornfields during the time the corn is in the ear; in fact, the bird spends a large part of its time at this season in extracting the worms that bore into the ears of corn. I have often, at short distance, watched them engaged in this valuable work.” They also feed on pine mast, the small wild grape, pokeberries, and other small wild fruit. I have never seen them in orchards or in fig trees, where the red-headed woodpecker is frequently found feeding.

As far as is known, this species does not visit cultivated fields, except as above referred to, or orchards and is not destructive to fruit and deserves to be regarded as wholly beneficial. This statement takes into account the fact that a number of observers say that they will continue to bore into certain pines that they have selected for a nesting site until the tree is killed. The fact is, however, that the tree is diseased and unsound before the woodpecker begins to utilize it and is already worthless for lumber, so that this species seems worthy of complete protection.

Behavior: The bird is strikingly gregarious as compared with other woodpeckers and is ordinarily to be found in small groups of six, eight, or even ten individuals, which seem to keep in continuous touch with one another, calling back and forth, sounding their drum roll on resonant timber and apparently not satisfied unless assured of the near presence of the group.

This behavior is no doubt due to the fact that the family remains together until early in winter, although family groups are probably joined by other individuals until the number above referred to is attained. Numerous observers speak of the frequent association of the red-cockaded woodpecker with other birds. This to the mind of the writer, however, is purely accidental and is due to the fact that there are certain species of birds that inhabit the open pineries and have common feeding ground amid habitat. Itis true that one often sees bluebirds, tufted titmice, white-breasted and brown-headed nuthatches, and red-cockaded woodpeckers in the same woodland and that when sitting quietly and concealed all the species mentioned pass in review before the observer, but probably it is not a true gregariousness that embraces all these various species: rather the restlessness that so frequently seems to possess the avian population of a given tract of woods communicates itself from one to the other and the entire avifauna of a limited patch of woodland begins to move in a certain direction perhaps because of some alarm which has been communicated from one member of the group to the others.

These woodpeckers are exceedingly active, galloping from one tree to another and rapidly ascending it in quest of food or apparently often merely to secure a better observation point somewhere near the top of thc tree. Their usual custom is to ascend the tree in spirals, although they have frequently been observed to continue a straight course up the trunk particularly when feeding. The bird may be described as wary rather than shy and is most adept at the familiar woodpecker trick of keeping the trunk of t.he tree between an approaching observer and itself.

As a rule they do not feed close to the ground, nor have I ever observed one on the ground even after the burning of a woodland, at which time the flicker and the red-bellied woodpecker may both be observed on the ground searching for grubs and insects killed by the blaze. Dr. Irving Phinizy (MS.) states that he has on several occasions observed the red-cockaded woodpecker descend a tree in a series of backward hops. This the writer has never observed. Arthur II. Howell (1932) states that the ivorybill inches backward down a tree, a somewhat different procedure. Frequently also they are observed, particularly when feeding near the top of a pine and out toward the end of a limb, to descend the hanging limb nuthatch fashion. Much of their feeding is done in the highest branches of the trees, and they seem to have a predilection for remaining there, spending a considerable portion of their time in the very crown of the tree, where they are very difficult to see.

They are exceedingly quarrelsome, particularly during the breeding season, yet their quarrels do not seem to be so serious or so prolonged as those of the red-headed woodpecker; and not infrequently, after the lapse of a very little time, birds that have been scolding one another most extensively again alight on the same pine tree and go about their respective businesses in perfect amity.

C. J. Maynard (1896) states, concerning its habits, as follows:

Wilson called the Cockaded Woodpeckers. Picus qncruhes, and this seems, at first glance, to be a most appropriate name, for, of all the family, these are not only the most noisy, but their notes are given in a decidedly fretful tone as If the birds were constantly In an Irritable state of mind. It must have been upon the impulse of the moment, however, that the Pioneer Ornithologist gave them the name of Querulus Woodpeckers, for a close study of their habits gives a very different impression of them. They are, in fact, a most jovial class of birds, being almost contantly engaged In sporting about the tops of tall pines or chasing one another from tree to tree, uttering their peevish sounding notes very frequently when in the best humor. The noise is more noticeable because they congregate in flocks, and it Is quite rare to find even a pair without other companions. They are also fond of the company of other members of the family and will even associate with the Jays, Blue Birds, or Warblers. This gregarious Instinct does not forsake them during the breeding season, for they build in detached communities. The nests are almost always in living pines, often thirty or forty feet from the ground; thus, as the trunks of these trees are covered with a smooth bark, it is quite difficult to climb them and, when the nests are reached It is not easy to cut the hard wood, especially as the straight trunks afford no foot-hold.

In flight, the cockaded woodpeckers resemble the downy but when they alight they strike the ohject upon which they wish to rest very hard. Like the preceding species, they are also exceedingly agile, moving spirally up the tall tree trunks with great celerity. Although they will occasionally alight near the ground, yet they spend the greater part of their time in the tops of the lofty pines; in fact, they pass a large portion of their lives there, for they are seldom, if ever, found elsewhere than in the piney woods and they inhabit this kind of woodland even to the extreme southern portion of the main-land of Florida.

The bird is resident throughout its normal range, although David V. Hembree, of Roswell, Ga., in the very foothills of the Appalachian Range, a lifelong student and collector of birds, writes me, “This bird does not breed in this locality. I have never seen a nest. A few are found here, nearly always males in April or May, and I have always thought them to be migrants or strays from their regular range.”

In common with the other small black and white woodpeckers, this species carries the vernacular name of sapsucker and in the main is not differentiated from the others, although one astute lumberman once said to me: “Speaking of sapsuckers, there is a piney-woods sapsucker which is different from the others, leastways he acts different.”

Voice: The voice is variously described by different observers: “harsh and discordant,” “almost exactly resembling the calls of the Brownheaded Nuthatch,” “resembling the yank-yank of a Whitebreasted Nuthatch,” “they have sharp calls more like loud sparrow alarms than woodpecker notes,” “resembling the querulous cries of young birds.”

The bird is noisy, and its call notes and scolding notes are to the ear of the writer quite radically different, the scolding note being more prolonged, somewhat rolling in character and lower in pitch. There is a definite nasal character to a note that to that extent does resemble the notes of the nuthatch. The note is quite characteristic and when once learned is distinguishable with ease from that of the other small woodpeckers. It resembles more the high note of some small woodwind instrument than anything else, having a definite clarinetlike quality.

Descriptions of bird notes are notoriously variable because of the variability of the human ear, and many attempts at phonetic reproduction of the bird notes are unsuccessful, and when, as is so often done, the attempt is directed to reproduction in syllables, the result is usually a futile and meaningless onomatopoeia.

DISTRIBUTION
Range: Southeastern United States; nonmigratory.

The range of the red-cockaded woodpecker extends north to northeastern Oklahoma (Copan); southern Missouri (Shannon County); Tennessee (Beersheba and Allardt); and North Carolina (Red Springs and Beaufort). East on the Atlantic coast from North Carolina (Beaufort) to southern Florida (Long Pine Key). South on the Gulf coast from the Florida Keys (Long Pine Key) to southeastern Texas (Houston). West to Texas (Houston); northwestern Louisiana (Mansfield); probably western Arkansas (Mena); and eastern Oklahoma (Tulsa and Copan).

Casual records: It seems probable that this species may breed or upon occasion has bred in the vicinity of Raleigh, N. C., as it was noted there several times in April from 1890 to 1898. It also has been reported as seen at Piney Creek, N. C., on July 6, 1932, and on September 12, 1933.

A specimen in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia was collected near that city in 1861; one in the collection of the Ohio State University was taken near Columbus, Ohio, on March 15, 1872. According to Stone (1909) the collection of George N. Lawrence contained a specimen taken near Hoboken, N. J.

Egg dates: Florida: 30 records, April 3 to May 28; 15 records, April 29 to May 20, indicating the height of the season.

South Carolina: 14 records, April 27 to May 28.