The Nuttall's Woodpecker: A Different Drummer

As I left the house the other day, looking for inspiration with my binoculars hanging from my shoulder, I heard a drumming sound so loud I thought there was a woodpecker the size of a pterodactyl nearby. Lifting my binoculars, I scanned the pine trees above the neighbors’ houses, following the sound. Finally I located the bird, not in a tree but on a phone pole. And it was the size of a small blackbird. Never underestimate the power of a Nuttall’s woodpecker in the spring.

And it is only in spring that this drumming reaches its full and amplified glory. Woodpeckers drill into trees for three reasons: for food, for a nest, and for showing off. The resonance of a hollow tree, an aged phone pole, or even a drain spout is just right for expressing interest in a female in the spring or declaring one’s turf.

The Nuttall’s woodpecker (Picoides nuttallii) is endemic to our state; in this whole world, it lives only in the oak woodlands of the central and western part of California. It likes blue oaks in particular, which is interesting because blue oaks also are endemic to California. What an ancient relationship this must be. These distinctively speckled birds, the males with bright red caps, are easy to identify but not that easy to spot. Photographer Ethan Winning says it took him three years to find out where some have been hiding. I’ll be keeping an eye out for them on Mount Wanda, a good place to see blue oaks—the bluish green foliage of these trees is easy to pick out when there are other oaks in view.

Besides the Nuttall’s woodpecker, there are plenty of downy woodpeckers (Picoides pubescens) and acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) in Martinez. The downy woodpecker is speckled like the Nuttall’s, but it is smaller and has a big white patch on its back. The acorn woodpecker is about the same size as the Nuttall’s but its back is solid black. Male and female acorn woodpeckers alike have red caps, and the masklike configuration of patches on their faces gives them the look of harlequins from medieval mime troupes.

The Nuttall’s woodpecker, though it lives in oak woodlands, lives just on insects, using its chisel-shaped beak to dig them out of tree bark. The acorn woodpecker is another story. For most of the year, these birds live on insects (especially ants), but they depend on acorns to get them through the winter, and so they collect them and store them in “granaries.” Living in collectives of up to seven males, three females, and ten nonbreeding helpers, they drill holes in dead trees, phone poles, or wooden buildings and stash acorns in them—up to fifty thousand in some granaries. Contra Costa Times columnist Gary Bogue got an email from a reader who, upon opening up the tool shed at his summer cabin, found it knee-deep in acorns. Woodpeckers had been pushing acorns through a small hole in the front of the shed. And yes, these are the birds that caused—and received—so much trouble in Rossmoor a few years ago, leading some of the homeowners there to get a permit to kill birds from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. At least twenty birds were shot, and more were captured and sent away to the National Wildlife Research Center in Colorado. The depredation permit has expired, and by now maybe some of the many helpful hints for repelling or diverting woodpeckers that the Audubon Society and others offered have been implemented.

Flickers and sapsuckers are also in the woodpecker family, and they too can be found in and around Martinez. But the best of all, in my opinion, is the pileated (rhymes with “syncopated,” sort of) woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), a raven-sized (16 to 32 inches long) beauty with a flaming red crest. These birds are found in the more northern parts of California, as well as the eastern US and across much of Canada. The only one I’ve ever seen was in Arkansas—what a pleasant surprise that was! Until recently I assumed they didn’t occur in the Bay Area, but then I read that they have been spotted in Redwood Regional Park and thereabouts as recently as 2009. And just last week, a man in Danville saw one flying past St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, so you never know. A good birder never takes anything for granted.

☼

A couple of tangents:

You would think the pileated woodpecker was the model for Woody Woodpecker, but it isn’t so. For more information see this NPR story. 

And in case you’re wondering, Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859), for whom the Nuttall’s woodpecker, the yellow-billed magpie (Pica nuttalli), the Nuttall’s oak, and several other plants and animals were named, was a wide-ranging explorer, naturalist, and ornithologist. There’s a character (“old curious”) based on him in Two Years before the Mast.