One thing that I have noticed as I study birds is that people have a hard time identifying Woodpeckers. Generally when people begin to describe woodpeckers their descriptions are sometimes mystifying. Most of the time the description will include that it has a red-head.
My Sibley’s Backyard Birds of the Southeast guide lists only seven woodpeckers in the Southeast. And I have had them all come visit my yard! To me that’s pretty amazing that I have had them all and I’ve been able to photograph six of them! Unfortunately I don’t always have my camera with me to grab birds that may only be there for brief moments.
The smallest woodpecker is the Downy Woodpecker at 6½”. Very few people call this woodpecker a Red-headed Woodpecker, but the male does have a red strip right at the back of his head. The Hairy Woodpecker is almost identical to the Downy except it is longer - 9¼”.
The actual Red-Headed Woodpecker is the same size as the Hairy Woodpecker at 9¼”. The head of the Red-Headed Woodpecker is a beautiful crimson red and his whole head is that color right up to his beak. The only other colors are black and white. These colors look like stripes in a flag the way that they are divided on the woodpecker. My Sibley’s guide says that it is a declining species, but I have seen an awesome upswing in the population of Red-Headed Woodpeckers in Senatobia. When I first started bird watching, I rarely saw them, but now they are everywhere.
The woodpecker that most people actually think of as the Red-headed Woodpecker is the Red-bellied Woodpecker. It is because these woodpeckers also have a red head, but their redhead goes only from its beak to the nape of their neck. Their chin feathers are white. Their red feathers on their head are more of an “orangey” red, not the crimson red feathers that are found on the true “Red-headed Woodpecker”. To complicate things even more is that the Red-bellied is the same size as the Red-headed - 9¼”. So I can understand why the identification of the two could become confusing.
The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker looks much like Downy & Hairy Woodpeckers in its feather colors and patterns. The male has red patches in 2 locations - the top of the head and underneath its chin. Even though they are called yellow-bellied, the yellow is a pale yellow and sometimes hard to detect. The sapsucker portion of their name is because they drill round holes into trees that tap into the sap of the tree. According to Audubon.org they don’t suck the sap as much as they use their tongue to lick it, but the name has stuck. I laugh a little at the name because I have heard it used to describe a coward in some westerns and on vocabulary.com it says that it means “not brave” or an insult for cowards.
The Northern Flicker would probably never be mistaken for a Red-headed Woodpecker because its feathers look more like an old-fashioned patchwork quilt with black stripes, polka dots and solid portions of tan, gray and red on its neck. But the red isn’t so much that it jumps out at you as the dominant theme of the bird. The Pileated Woodpecker is a huge woodpecker that is crow-size at 16½” long. He has a wing-span of 29”! So when you have seen this woodpecker in your trees, you know that you have seen a really big bird! The shape of his head is “cartoon-like” similar to the shape of Woody Woodpecker from the cartoons. His head feathers are red, but if the woodpecker you see is huge, don’t mistake him to be a Red-headed Woodpecker.
When you do what Jesus said to do and “Look at the birds of the air…” Matthew 6:26, you become more and more aware of the many different species of birds God has made and you learn to love them!
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