Episode 34: Red-Headed Woodpecker – Voice of the Wild

This is Illinois Extension’s Voice of the Wild. A new wild voice in just a moment, so find someplace quiet, take a deep breath, and enjoy.

In the kind of open woodland this sensational woodpecker prefers, a few sturdy wingbeats is all it takes to send it from oak to oak and snag to snag. It inquisitively searches these big trees for grubs, beetles, and nooks to hide a stash of acorns. In the spring and summer they form rambunctious social groups that nest together in these woods. If the crop of acorns and other tree mast is good enough, they’ll even stay for winter. Their high-contrast plumage is a welcome sight at any time of the year, but on a gloomy winter day its red head, big white wingpatches, and white rear, seem an especially extravagant treat. And While all the woodpeckers of the midwest have at least a little red on their head, only this one has red from nape to throat.

This is the red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) from the woodpeckcer family, Picidae.

Being a woodpecker, this bird makes sounds both nonvocal and vocal…I’ll point out three vocaliztions here; the harsh and untrilled call which sounds like “cheer” or an accusatory “weird," a staccato call that’s given in a similar voice, and last, they have a kind of hoarse laugh-like sound they give when they’re being social…and Alltogether, here’s the redheaded woodpecker again.

Thank you to the Macaulay library at the Cornell lab for our bird sounds. And thank you for tuning in to learn a new wild voice with Illinois Extension.