The English naturalist Mark Catesby described and illustrated the red-headed woodpecker in his book The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands which was published between 1729 and 1732. Catesby used the English name "The Red-headed Wood-pecker" and the Latin Picus capite toto rubro. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he included the red-headed woodpecker, coined the binomial namePicus erythrocephalus and cited Catesby's book. The specific epithet combines the Classical Greek ἐρυθρός, eruthros meaning "red" and κεφαλή, kephalos meaning "headed". The type locality is South Carolina. The red-headed woodpecker is one of 24 species now placed in the genusMelanerpes that was introduced by the English ornithologist William John Swainson in 1832 specifically to accommodate the red-headed woodpecker. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
Description
Adults are strikingly tri-colored, with a black back and tail and a red head and neck. Their underparts are mainly white. The wings are black with white secondary remiges. Adult males and females are identical in plumage. Juveniles have very similar markings, but have an all grey head. While red-bellied woodpeckers have some bright red on the backs of their necks and heads, red-headed woodpeckers have a much deeper red that covers their entire heads and necks, as well as a dramatically different overall plumage pattern. These are mid-sized woodpeckers. Both sexes measure from in length, with a wingspan of. They weigh from with an average of. Each wing measures, the tail measures, the bill measures and the tarsus measures. The maximum longevity in the wild is 9.9 years. They give a tchur-tchurcall or on their territory.
Behavior
These birds fly to catch insects in the air or on the ground, on trees or gather and store nuts. They are omnivorous, eating insects, seeds, fruits, berries, nuts, and occasionally small rodents and even the eggs of other birds. About two thirds of their diet is made up of plants. They nest in a cavity in a dead tree, utility pole, or a dead part of a tree that is between above the ground. They lay 4 to 7 eggs in early May which are incubated for two weeks. Two broods can be raised in a single nesting season. Northern birds migrate to the southern parts of the range, with most having arrived on the breeding range by late April, and having left for winter quarters by late October; southern birds are often permanent residents.
Conservation
The red-headed woodpecker is rated as least concern on the International Union for Conservation of Nature 's Red List of Endangered species. It was formerly rated as near threatened, having been reclassified from Least Concern in 2004 after it appeared to have experienced a 65.5% decline in population over 40 years; from 1966-2015 there was a greater than 1.5% annual population decline throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys, and in central Florida. Increased habitat management, however, has caused its numbers to stabilize, thus leading to its downlisting. The red-headed woodpecker was historically a common species in southern Canada and the east-central United States. Consistent long-term population declines have resulted in red-headed woodpecker's threatened status in Canada and several states in the US. Throughout most of its range it inhabits areas that have been heavily altered by humans. Factors suggested for red-headed woodpecker declines include: loss of overall habitat and, within habitats, standing dead wood required for nest sites, limitations of food supply, and possible nest-site competition with other cavity nesters such as European starlings or red-bellied woodpeckers. Of the 600 Canadian Important Bird Areas only seven report the red-headed woodpecker in their area: Cabot Head, Ontario on the Georgian Bay side of the tip of Bruce Peninsula; Carden Plain, Ontario east of Lake Simcoe; Long Point Peninsula and Marshes, Ontario along Lake Erie near London, Ontario; Point Abino, Ontario on Lake Erie near Niagara Falls; Port Franks Forested Dunes, Ontario northeast of Sarnia on Lake Huron; Kinosota/Leifur, Manitoba at the northwest side of Lake Manitoba south of The Narrows and east of Riding Mountain National Park; and along South Saskatchewan River from Empress, Alberta to Lancer Ferry in Saskatchewan.
Popular culture
In 1996, the United States Postal Service issued a 2-cent postage stamp depicting a perched red-headed woodpecker. The stamp was discontinued at some time thereafter, but re-issued in 1999 and remained available for purchase until 2006.
