Acorn Woodpecker

Acorn Woodpecker, male

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Acorn Woodpecker, female

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1. Description
2. Sound
3. Conservation Status
4. Other Names
5. Cool Facts
6. Full detailed species account

The clown-faced Acorn Woodpecker is a common bird of western oak forests. It lives in extended family groups, and all members of the group spend hours and hours storing thousands of acorns in carefully tended holes in trees and telephone poles.

Description

• Medium-sized Woodpecker.
• Back and chest black.
• Head black, white, and red.

• Size: 19-23 cm (7-9 in)
• Wingspan: 35-43 cm (14-17 in)
• Weight: 65-90 g (2.29-3.18 ounces)

Sex Differences

Sexes similar, but male has solid red crown; female has black band between forehead and red.

Sound

Most common call a loud "waka-waka-waka."

Conservation Status

Common. Populations stable.

Other Names

Pic glandivore (French)
Carpintero de bellota (Spanish)

Cool Facts

• The Acorn Woodpecker has a very complicated social system. Family groups hold territories, and young woodpeckers stay with their parents for several years and help the parents raise more young. Several different individuals of each sex may breed within one family, with up to seven breeding males and three breeding females in one group.

• All members of an Acorn Woodpecker group spend large amounts of time storing acorns. Acorns typically are stored in holes drilled into a single tree, called a granary tree. One granary tree may have up to 50,000 holes in it, each of which is filled with an acorn in autumn.

• The Acorn Woodpecker will use human-made structures to store acorns, drilling holes in fence posts, utility poles, buildings, and even automobile radiators. Occasionally the woodpecker will put acorns into places where it cannot get them out. Woodpeckers put 220 kg (485 lb) of acorns into a wooden water tank in Arizona. In parts of its range the Acorn Woodpecker does not construct a granary tree, but instead stores acorns in natural holes and cracks in bark. If the stores are eaten, the woodpecker will move to another area, even going from Arizona to Mexico to spend the winter.

• In groups with more than one breeding female, the females put their eggs into a single nest cavity. A female usually destroys any eggs in the nest before she starts to lay, and more than one third of all eggs laid in joint nests are destroyed. Once all the females start to lay, they stop removing eggs.

Sources used to construct this page:

Koenig, W. D., P. B. Stacey, M. T. Stanback, and R. L. Mumme. 1995. Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus). In The Birds of North America, No. 194 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C.