Woodpecker Identification: North America's 22 Species

A woodpecker clinging to a trunk usually shows you its back first, and the back pattern sorts North America's 22 species into a few groups faster than any other mark. Most woodpeckers are some combination of red, white and black, as Audubon puts it, so the arrangement matters more than the colors.

• Black back with one white stripe down the middle: Downy or Hairy Woodpecker. Audubon describes the Hairy's back as having a stark white patch running down the center of its black back.
• Black-and-white bars across the back: Red-bellied Woodpecker in the East; Gila Woodpecker in the deserts of Arizona, Southern California and New Mexico; Golden-fronted Woodpecker in central Texas and southwestern Oklahoma; Nuttall's Woodpecker in California oak woodland; Ladder-backed Woodpecker in the Southwest.
• Brown with black spots and a black chest patch: a flicker.
• Solid black back, big white wing patches, all-red head: Red-headed Woodpecker.
• Black body, red crest, crow-sized: Pileated Woodpecker.
• Bold vertical white stripe along the folded wing, red forehead: a sapsucker.

Then check the bill against the head, and where the bird is feeding. Those two settle most of the remaining pairs.

These two look almost identical and share most of the continent, so they are the woodpecker question people ask most. Project FeederWatch's tricky-ID page gives the marks that work:

• Bill: Downy's bill is short and dainty, about one-third as long as the distance from the base of the bill to the back of the head. Hairy's is long and chisel-like, about as long as that distance.
• Size: Downy averages about 6.5 in; Hairy about 9.25 in, robin-sized. Size alone is hard to judge on a trunk, which is why the bill ratio comes first.
• Outer tail feathers: Downy's white outer tail feathers are usually barred in black. In most of the eastern US, Hairy's are completely white.
• Shoulder mark: Hairy shows a well-developed black comma-shaped mark from the shoulder onto the breast; on Downy it is often faint.
• Voice: Audubon describes Downy's call as a quiet pik with a descending rattle, and Hairy's as a sharp peek, louder than Downy's, with a rattle on one pitch.

In the West, Audubon notes that Hairy Woodpeckers generally show less white spotting on the wings than eastern birds, so compare with a local photo rather than an eastern field guide plate.

Audubon notes that the Red-bellied Woodpecker is often mistaken for the Red-headed. The names suggest the opposite of what you see, which is the source of the confusion.

Red-bellied Woodpecker is about 9.4 in long with black-and-white barring on the back and a buffy-brown face and chest. Males have red on the nape, forehead and crown, females only on the nape. The red on the belly is usually hard to see. Audubon writes its call as chuck-chuck-chuck and a rolling churrrr, and notes the species has expanded its range northward in recent decades.

Red-headed Woodpecker is about 10 in, with the entire head crimson, a solid black back and large white wing patches. Young birds have a brown head and dark bars across the white wing patch, turning red over their first winter. Audubon estimates the population at 1.8 million and says it has been decreasing for years, citing removal of dead trees, competition with starlings for nest holes and collisions with vehicles along roads.

So a woodpecker with a red cap and a barred back is a Red-bellied. Red on the whole head and a plain black back means Red-headed.

Northern Flicker is a brown woodpecker, 11-12 in long, with a black chest patch and a spotted belly. Eastern birds (yellow-shafted) have bright yellow under the wings and tail, a red crescent on the back of the head, a tan face and a gray crown; the male has a black mustache. Western birds (red-shafted) have salmon-pink under the wings and tail, a gray face and a brown crown; the male's mustache is red. Where the two meet they interbreed freely and produce many intermediates, according to Audubon. A woodpecker hopping on the lawn is most likely a flicker.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is 7.1-8.7 in with a bold black-and-white face and a bright red forehead cap. Males have a red throat, females a white one. It drills tiny holes in neatly spaced rows and returns to feed on the sap. It is strongly migratory: Audubon says there is essentially no overlap between its summer and winter ranges, and it winters in the southeastern US and Central America. Red-naped and Red-breasted Sapsuckers replace it in the West.

Pileated Woodpecker is 16-19 in, black with a red crest and a white neck stripe, and shows white underwing patches in flight. Males have red on the forehead and in the mustache stripe; females have black there. It cuts rectangular holes in dead trees to reach carpenter ants, which make up as much as 60% of its diet by Audubon's figure.

Location removes many candidates before you look at a single feather. From Audubon's roundup:

• Lewis's Woodpecker: western states; green, silver, pink and red, and catches insects in the air like a flycatcher.
• Acorn Woodpecker: stores acorns in communal granaries used across generations.
• White-headed Woodpecker: high-elevation western pine forests; white face on a black body.
• Williamson's Sapsucker: males jet-black with white face lines; females brown and gray, looking like a different species.
• Nuttall's and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers: Ladder-backed shows more white on the face and back; their ranges overlap only in the California foothills.
• Gila Woodpecker: nests in saguaro cacti.
• Arizona Woodpecker: almost only in southeastern Arizona, with a brown back and a white cheek patch.
• American Three-toed and Black-backed Woodpeckers: northern and western mountain forests, both with three toes; they prefer recently burned forest.
• Red-cockaded Woodpecker: southeastern US, dependent on longleaf pine; the only threatened species on Audubon's list.

Sometimes you find the work before the bird. The marks left in wood point to different species:

• Neat horizontal rows of small holes, sometimes wet with sap: a sapsucker.
• Large rectangular holes in dead trees, stumps torn apart: Pileated Woodpecker.
• A brown woodpecker probing the lawn or bare ground: Northern Flicker, which hops on the ground to feed on ants.

Drumming is a territorial signal, not feeding, and The Nature Conservancy notes that each species has its own rhythm. It gives about 26 beats per second for the Hairy Woodpecker and about 25 for the Northern Flicker. Audubon describes the sapsucker's drum as staccato.

For a photo that can be identified, get the bird side-on so the bill, the head pattern and the back all show in one frame, and add a second frame of the outer tail if you are separating Downy from Hairy. Photograph it and BirdLens suggests the species; then check the bill ratio above before you settle on a name.