What do downy woodpeckers eat

At night the male remains on the eggs alone while the female sleeps elsewhere. When the young woodpeckers hatch, which occurs in Canada from early May to July, depending on the part of the country, they are tiny helpless creatures, almost naked, sprawled at the bottom of the cavity. They weigh about 1. For a few days the parents warm the nestlings as they did the eggs and occasionally bring them small insects for food.

As the nestlings grow, the parents gradually stop brooding, or keeping them warm, and they spend more time collecting food for their young.

And while the nestling subsides, the parent picks up a fecal sac, or dropping, and flies away with it. In this way, the nestlings are fed and their nest is kept clean until they are 17 or 18 days old, when they are almost fully grown. They look like their parents, except that the crowns of the young males are tinted red or rust-red or pinkish, and those of the females are striped or dotted with white.

The young ones are now able to crawl up the walls of the cavity and take turns sitting in the doorway, looking out. Each of four nestlings is therefore fed four or five times an hour. As the time approaches for the young to leave the nest the parents slow down the feedings, making the nestlings livelier and hungrier. The nestling in the doorway pops in and out with great vigour and calls loudly, but it is in no hurry to leave the nest. Almost a day passes before the fledgling, now as large as its parents and spotlessly clean, pops out far enough to spread its untried wings.

Its first flight is usually to the nearest tree, where it often remains motionless for about an hour. When the fledglings are all out, they hide among the green leaves in the tall trees and call for the parents to come and feed them.

Within a week they follow their parents in search of food. At the age of three or four weeks the young birds are fully capable of looking after themselves. However, it is at this stage in the life cycle that mortality is greatest, when the young are out of the nest and no longer protected by the vigilance of their parents.

The adult birds begin to moult their worn and dirty plumage while the young are still in the nest. The strong, central pair of tail feathers is moulted, or shed and replaced, only after all the other tail feathers have been replaced. The complete moult takes about two months, during which time each bird keeps much to itself, resting and feeding.

When the moult is over in September, the Downy Woodpecker emerges with the white part of its fresh winter plumage showing a faintly yellow tinge that eventually is lost by wear.

The young Downy Woodpeckers also shed their juvenile plumages. Their moult starts in the summer and usually ends in full adult plumage by late fall. Their crowns are jet black, and at the back of the head the young males wear the bright red spot of the adult. All of these birds can capture Downys while the woodpeckers are flying.

Many a Downy Woodpecker has saved itself from the grasping talons of a hawk by dodging swiftly sideways behind the trunk of a tree. Black rat snakes often prey on Downy eggs and nestlings, as do flying, red, and eastern grey squirrels. Nestlings raised in holes are, of course, much safer than those in open nests. Even a squirrel, scratching and gnawing at the soft wood to get at the fledglings within, has a difficult time slipping past the watchful defender sitting in the passageway, its awl-like beak at the ready.

Some forest thinning is beneficial for the Downy Woodpecker, which does well in early second-growth forests, where there are more open stands of trees than in older forests. And while extensive forest clearing eliminates habitat for the Downy Woodpecker, the bird has survived in areas that have been cleared for agriculture. In these areas, the replacement of wooden fence posts — where the Downy Woodpecker bores roosts, or resting places — with metal posts seems to be the main concern.

Overall, Downy Woodpecker populations are stable in North America, and in Canada, the numbers of the birds has even increased in the last 20 to 30 years. All About Birds, Downy Woodpecker. Audubon Field Guides, Downy Woodpecker. Print resources Godfrey, W. The birds of Canada. Revised edition.

National Museums of Canada, Ottawa. Grier, K. Downy Woodpecker. Grolier, Toronto. Jackson, J. Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens. In The Birds of North America, no. Poole and F. Gill, editors. The Birds of North America, Inc. Kilham, L. Life history studies of woodpeckers of eastern North America. Cambridge University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lawrence, L. A comparative life-history study of four species of woodpeckers.

Ornithological Monograph No. Short, L. Woodpeckers of the world. Monograph Series No. Delaware Museum of Natural History. Weidner Associates Inc. All rights reserved. Dickson, ; C. The Northern Leopard Frog Lithobates pipiens is named for its leopard-like spots across its back and sides.

Historically, these frogs were harvested for food frog legs and are still used today for dissection practice in biology class. Northern Leopard Frogs are about the size of a plum, ranging from 7 to 12 centimetres.

They have a variety of unique colour morphs, or genetic colour variations. They can be different shades of green and brown with rounded black spots across its back and legs and can even appear with no spots at all known as a burnsi morph. They have white bellies and two light coloured dorsal back ridges.

Another pale line travels underneath the nostril, eye and tympanum, ending at the shoulder. The tympanum is an external hearing structure just behind and below the eye that looks like a small disk. Black pupils and golden irises make up their eyes. They are often confused with Pickerel Frogs Lithobates palustris ; whose spots are more squared then rounded and have a yellowish underbelly.

Male frogs are typically smaller than the females. Their average life span is two to four years in the wild, but up to nine years in captivity. Tadpoles are dark brown with tan tails. Lampreys are an amazing group of ancient fish species which first appeared around million years ago.

This means they evolved millions of years before the dinosaurs roamed the earth. There are about 39 species of lamprey currently described plus some additional landlocked populations and varieties. In general, lamprey are one of three different life history types and are a combination of non-parasitic and parasitic species.

Non-parasitic lamprey feed on organic material and detritus in the water column. Parasitic lamprey attach to other fish species to feed on their blood and tissues. Most, 22 of the 39 species, are non-parasitic and spend their entire lives in freshwater. The remainder are either parasitic spending their whole life in freshwater or, parasitic and anadromous. Anadromous parasitic lampreys grow in freshwater before migrating to the sea where they feed parasitically and then migrate back to freshwater to spawn.

The Cowichan Lake lamprey Entosphenus macrostomus is a freshwater parasitic lamprey species. It has a worm or eel-like shape with two distinct dorsal fins and a small tail. It is a slender fish reaching a maximum length of about mm. When they are getting ready to spawn they shrink in length and their dorsal fins overlap. Unlike many other fish species, when lampreys are getting ready to spawn you can tell the difference between males and females.

Females develop fleshy folds on either side of their cloaca and an upturned tail. The males have a downturned tail and no fleshy folds. These seven gill pores are located one after another behind the eye. There are several characteristics which are normally used to identify lamprey. Many of these are based on morphometrics or measurements, of or between various body parts like width of the eye or, distance between the eye and the snout.

Other identifying characteristics include body colour and the number and type of teeth. Some distinguishing characteristics of this species are the large mouth, called and oral disc and a large eye. This species also has unique dentition. For example, these teeth are called inner laterals.

Each lateral tooth has cusps and together they always occur in a cusp pattern. At the same time, the Sea Otter is the largest member of its family, the mustelids, which includes River Otters, weasels, badgers, wolverines and martens. It may come to land to flee from predators if needed, but the rest of its time is spent in the ocean. It varies in colour from rust to black. Unlike seals and sea lions, the Sea Otter has little body fat to help it survive in the cold ocean water.

Instead, it has both guard hairs and a warm undercoat that trap bubbles of air to help insulate it. The otter is often seen at the surface grooming; in fact, it is pushing air to the roots of its fur. Mollusks are invertebrates, meaning they have no bones.

They are cold-blooded, like all invertebrates, and have blue, copper-based blood. The octopus is soft-bodied, but it has a very small shell made of two plates in its head and a powerful, parrot-like beak. The Giant Pacific Octopus is the largest species of octopus in the world.

Specimens have weighed as much as kg and measured 9. Studies determined, though, that they are indeed different. While the Western Chorus Frog might have slightly shorter legs than the Boreal Chorus Frog, and that their respective calls have different structures, genetics have proven this. Chorus Frogs are about the size of large grape, about 2. They are pear-shaped, with a large body compared to their pointed snout.

Their smooth although a bit granular skin varies in colour from green-grey to brownish. They are two of our smallest frogs, but best ways to tell them apart from other frogs is by the three dark stripes down their backs, which can be broken into blotches, by their white upper lip, and by the dark line that runs through each eye.

Their belly is generally yellow-white to light green. Males are slightly smaller than females, but the surest way to tell sexes apart is by the fact that only males call and can inflate their yellow vocal sacs.

Adults tend to live only for one year, but some have lived as many as three years. Their tadpoles the life stage between the egg and the adult are grey or brown. Their body is round with a clear tail. The Common Raven Corvus corax is one of the heaviest passerine birds and the largest of all the songbirds. It is easily recognizable because of its size between 54 and 67 centimetres long, with a wingspan of to cm, and weighing between 0.

It has a ruff of feathers on the throat, which are called 'hackles', and a wide, robust bill. When in flight, it has a wedge-shaped tail, with longer feathers in the middle. While females may be a bit smaller, both sexes are very similar.

The size of an adult raven may also vary according to its habitat, as subspecies from colder areas are often larger. A raven may live up to 21 years in the wild, making it one of the species with the longest lifespan in all passerine birds.

Both birds are from the same genus order of passerine birds, corvid family —like jays, magpies and nutcrackers, Corvus genus and have a similar colouring. But the American Crow is smaller with a wingspan of about 75 cm and has a fan-shaped tail when in flight with no longer feathers. Their cries are different: the raven produces a low croaking sound, while the crow has a higher pitched cawing cry.

While adult ravens tend to live alone or in pairs, crows are more often observed in larger groups. The Atlantic Cod Gadus morhua is a medium to large saltwater fish: generally averaging two to three kilograms in weight and about 65 to centimetres in length, the largest cod on record weighed about kg and was more than cm long! Individuals living closer to shore tend to be smaller than their offshore relatives, but male and female cod are not different in size, wherever they live. Ask any backyard birder what woodpeckers eat, and there will always be many different answers.

Woodpeckers stay in the same range year-round , but as the seasons change they alter their diets to take advantage of easily available foods that meet their nutritional needs.

Understanding what woodpeckers eat can help birders provide the best woodpecker food at their feeders, and can help birders in the field know how to find feeding woodpeckers to observe. Many novice birders and non-birders mistakenly assume that woodpecker drumming is related to feeding, and that woodpeckers may even eat the wood or sawdust they peck.

In fact, while some woodpeckers may use drumming to help dislodge insects to eat or to drill holes to get at sap or burrowing insects, drumming is most often unrelated to eating. Instead, drumming is a method of communication, typically used to advertise a territory or attract a mate. In some cases, vigorous drumming also warns off intruders or scares away potential predators, especially if the bird is drumming on a loud, resonant object.

While woodpeckers will use their bills as tools when feeding, they do so by prying insects out of wood rather than just hitting the wood, and no woodpeckers actually eat wood. Depending on the season, a woodpecker may eat several different things. The exact foods preferred by each species vary, but the most popular woodpecker foods include:. Woodpeckers change their diets according to what food sources are most abundant.

Sap is a popular food in the spring when few other foods are available, but rich, sweet sap is rising in trees reawakening after a long winter. In the spring and summer, these birds feast primarily on insects that provide high levels of protein for breeding birds and growing hatchlings.

In the fall, nuts, seeds, and fruit are popular foods for woodpeckers because of plentiful natural harvests. In the winter, seeds and nuts are the most abundant foods, as well as some leftover fruit that remains on sturdy bushes or trees. In addition to varying their food choices by season, some species will even store foods for colder months when supplies are scarce. The acorn woodpecker, for example, creates extensive granary trees to hold hundreds or thousands of acorns.

Also found in created habitats including orchards, parks, and suburbs. You may also find Downy Woodpeckers in open areas, where they can nest along fencerows and feed amid tall weeds. Downy Woodpeckers eat mainly insects, including beetle larvae that live inside wood or tree bark as well as ants and caterpillars.

They eat pest insects including corn earworm, tent caterpillars, bark beetles, and apple borers. About a quarter of their diet consists of plant material, particularly berries, acorns, and grains. Downy Woodpeckers are common feeder birds, eating suet and black oil sunflower seeds and occasionally drinking from hummingbird feeders. An active woodpecker that moves quickly over tree trunks, branches, and stems of grasses and wildflowers, characteristically leaning against its stiffened tail feathers for support.

Downy Woodpeckers move horizontally and downwards on trees much more readily than most other woodpeckers. You may also see them perched atop tall weeds such as goldenrod in late summer, hammering away at a plant gall to get at the larva inside.

Occasionally hops on the ground for food. Downy Woodpeckers have the undulating flight pattern typical of many woodpecker species, alternating quick wingbeats with folding the wings against the body. When having a dispute with another bird, Downy Woodpeckers fan their tails, raise their head feathers, and jerk their beaks from side to side.

In spring you may see courtship displays in which males and females fly between trees with slow, fluttering wingbeats that look almost butterfly-like. Both male and female excavate the nest hole, a job that takes 1 to 3 weeks. Entrance holes are round and