Red-Bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus)

I’ve seen, and more often heard (they can be quite noisy in fall), these beautiful woodpeckers in these woods beginning about October, but they'll remain with us throughout the winter months. For my taste, the red-bellied and flicker are our most attractively colored woodpecker. The red-bellied isn’t very appropriately named, however. It has a black and white streaked and dotted back, a red head-dress that reaches down the back of its head, and, otherwise, it’s white, including its belly. But, the combination of bright red and black is exquisite.

   Though once non-existent in our state, red-bellied woodpeckers have fortunately moved north over the past twenty or so years. 

·         1883: Elliott Coues in New England Bird Life, wrote that “the Red-bellied is the rarest of all the New England Woodpeckers, being in fact only a casual summer visitor to the limit of the Carolinian Fauna, or slightly beyond.” Coues mentioned one early record in Connecticut in 1843.

·         1982: Kimball C. Elkins, in A Checklist of the Birds of New Hampshire, listed the red-bellied woodpecker as “very rare to casual.”

·         1990: A Beaver Brook Association bird list identified them as “Uncommon to Rare.

·         1994: The Atlas of Breeding Birds in New Hampshire mentioned that red-bellied woodpeckers seem to be increasing as summer residents; and from that time on, their numbers began increasing in the northeast.

·         2001: The Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count for New Hampshire listed 21 red-bellied woodpeckers.

·         2004: Audubon, updating Elkin’s “Checklist,” listed red-bellies as “uncommon to fairly common.” Today: They’ve become more common in the southern sections of New Hampshire throughout the year.   

   I've noticed that unlike most woodpeckers, the red-bellied prefers to take its insects in a similar fashion to the nuthatch or brown creeper. I seldom see it knocking on tree trunks or even tearing away pieces of bark. Instead, as in the pictures above, it will turn its head and slide its large tongue into the crevasse of the bark.