Bird Profile

Red-bellied Woodpecker

The bird with the red head is called red-bellied, and the red belly is almost impossible to see. Here is what to actually look for, and how to keep one coming to your yard year-round.

The Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) is a medium-sized woodpecker of eastern woodlands and suburbs, about 9.4 inches (24 cm) long, with a barred black-and-white back, pale gray-buff underparts, and a broad red stripe running over the crown and down the nape. The red belly it is named for is a faint pink smudge low on the underside that most people never see in a lifetime of watching.

That mismatch causes more misidentification reports than any other North American feeder bird. People see a woodpecker with a red head and reasonably conclude they have a Red-headed Woodpecker, which is a very different and much scarcer bird.

This profile covers how to identify the species properly, how to separate it from its lookalikes, what it eats through the year, the feeder setup that holds one in your yard, and the caching and nesting behavior that explains most of what you will see it do.

How to identify a Red-bellied Woodpecker#

Start with the back. A fine, even ladder of black and white bars runs from the shoulders to the rump, a pattern often described as a zebra back. No other common eastern woodpecker shows it.

The underparts are plain: a soft grayish-tan from throat to vent, with no streaks, spots or bib. Low on the belly, between the legs, sits a wash of pale red or pink. On a bird hanging upside down under a suet cage you occasionally catch it in good light. Otherwise, take it on trust.

The head carries the obvious color. Males have red running continuously from the base of the bill, over the crown, and down the back of the neck. Females have a red nape and a small separate red patch just above the bill, with gray in between. That difference is easy to see at a feeder and lets you tell your visitors apart.

In flight the bird shows a white rump patch and white crescents in the wings, and it flies in the deep undulating bounce typical of woodpeckers. The common call is a rolling, throaty churr, dropping slightly at the end, plus a rapid cha-cha-cha when birds are chasing each other around a trunk.

Red-bellied, Red-headed and the other lookalikes#

Three birds get confused with this one, for different reasons.

The Red-headed is the one that matters. An adult has a hood of solid crimson with no gray, black or white breaking it up, and the wings carry white panels so large the bird looks half white when it flies. Immature Red-headeds have brown heads, which fools people the other way.

Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers are black and white with striped faces and a white or spotted stripe down the back, never the even barring of a Red-bellied. If the bird looks black and white and the head is striped rather than capped, it is one of those two.

Where and when you will see one#

Red-bellied Woodpeckers live in deciduous and mixed woodland, river bottoms, oak and pine woods, and any suburb with mature trees. They are common in yards with large hardwoods and scarce in new developments where every tree is under 20 feet (6 m).

They are non-migratory. The same pair typically holds a patch of woodland year-round, and feeder visits continue straight through winter, often peaking in the coldest weeks when insects are unavailable. Over the last hundred years the species has pushed steadily north, and it is now routine in areas of the Great Lakes states, New York and southern New England where it was once a rarity.

Visits tend to be short and repeated: the bird arrives, takes food, leaves for a minute or two, and returns. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon are usually busier than dawn.

What Red-bellied Woodpeckers eat#

The wild diet is roughly half plant and half animal, and it shifts with the season. Insects, spiders, beetle larvae dug out of dead wood, and the occasional tree frog or nestling make up the animal side. Acorns, beechnuts, wild fruit, pine seeds and, in the South, citrus and other soft fruit make up the rest.

At feeders the order of preference is consistent:

1. Suet. Plain rendered suet, nut cakes and peanut butter cakes all work. Details on grades and summer handling are in the complete suet guide.
2. Peanuts. Whole, halved or in the shell. They will hammer a shelled peanut into a bark crevice and chip it open. See peanuts for birds for grades and aflatoxin cautions.
3. Sunflower. Black oil sunflower and hearts, taken from hoppers, platforms and sturdy tubes.
4. Fruit and other extras. Orange halves, grape jelly and mealworms are taken opportunistically, mostly in spring.

They have a barbed, sticky tongue that extends roughly 2 inches (5 cm) beyond the bill tip, which is how a bird that cannot fit inside a crevice still gets the grub out of it.

The feeder setup that works#

A tail-prop suet cage is the single best purchase. The extended lower panel gives the bird somewhere to brace its stiff tail, which is how woodpeckers hold themselves steady, and it also excludes some of the hanging blackbirds. Mount it on a pole or trunk at 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 m).

Add a mesh peanut feeder and a hopper or platform with sunflower, and you have covered everything the species wants. Full options are compared in suet feeders, and the broader recruiting strategy is in how to attract woodpeckers.

Two practical warnings. Starlings can strip a suet cake in an afternoon; an upside-down or caged suet feeder solves it, and the rest of the tactics are in keeping starlings off feeders. And in cold weather a suet feeder is the highest-value thing in the yard, which is worth remembering when you read best high-energy foods for cold weather.

Behavior worth knowing#

Caching. This is the behavior people ask about most. Red-bellied Woodpeckers store food constantly, wedging seeds and nuts into bark furrows, fence rails, siding gaps and gutter seams, then tamping them in with the bill. A bird making forty trips to your peanut feeder is stocking a larder, not eating forty peanuts.

Drumming. In late winter and spring both sexes drum on resonant surfaces to advertise territory. Metal flashing, chimney caps and gutters are chosen precisely because they are loud. The drumming stops once pairs settle, usually within a few weeks.

Dominance. At a feeder a Red-bellied outranks chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and both small woodpeckers, and will displace them with a single lunge. It usually gives way to a Blue Jay mob and to squirrels.

Nesting and the starling problem#

Pairs excavate a fresh cavity most years, usually in a dead limb or a dead section of a living tree, at 5 to 70 feet (1.5 to 21 m) up. The male starts the hole and the female joins in. Clutches are typically 3 to 5 white eggs, with two broods common in the South.

European Starlings are the main threat to a finished cavity. Starlings cannot excavate but will evict a woodpecker from a completed hole, and this competition is one reason to value dead limbs you might otherwise remove. Leaving safe standing dead wood is covered in snags, dead wood and leaf litter.

Population and outlook#

This is one of the few backyard species doing well. Numbers have been broadly stable to increasing, and the range has expanded north and northeast, most likely helped by maturing second-growth forest and by winter feeding. It is not a conservation concern.

That does not make it invulnerable. Loss of dead wood in managed suburbs, competition from starlings, and removal of mature hardwoods all press on nesting sites even where food is abundant.

A setup that brings them in#

• A tail-prop suet cage on a pole or trunk at 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 m), stocked year-round with a nut or plain rendered cake.
• A mesh peanut feeder nearby, filled with unsalted peanut halves.
• A hopper or platform with black oil sunflower for the days the suet is busy.
• Feeders sited near mature trees, not in open lawn, with a clear approach from a trunk.
• One dead limb left standing if it is safe to do so.
• Water year-round. Woodpeckers use bird baths more than most people expect, especially in dry late summer.

Give a new setup three to six weeks before you judge it. In a neighborhood with mature trees, a suet cage almost always finds a Red-bellied eventually.