Downy Woodpecker: the small one, and how to be sure

The short answer

• Bill length is the reliable mark: a Downy's bill is roughly a third of the head length and looks stubby, a Hairy's is nearly as long as the head is deep.
• Check the outer tail feathers. A Downy has black bars or spots on the white outer tail feathers, a Hairy's are clean white.
• A Downy weighs about 27 g against a Hairy's 62 g, so it is not a slightly smaller bird, it is under half the mass.
• Suet and shelled peanuts are top-tier Downy foods. Sunflower, in-shell peanuts and mealworms are all taken readily, and they never feed on the ground.
• At 27 g a Downy passes through a caged feeder that shuts a Hairy out, which is a useful way to give the small woodpecker its own supply.

Two black and white woodpeckers with a red nape patch on the male visit feeders across almost all of North America, and they look nearly identical in a photograph. One of them is at nearly every feeding station in the country. The other is scarce. Getting them right is the most useful identification skill in backyard bird feeding, and it comes down to four things.

Four marks that separate Downy from Hairy#

1. Bill length against head length#

This is the mark to learn, because it works at any angle where you can see the head in profile, in any light, on any subspecies.

A Downy's bill is roughly one third the length of the head, measured from the base of the bill to the back of the skull. It looks like a short stub stuck on the front of a round, soft face. A Hairy's bill is nearly as long as the head is deep, close to the full distance from the bill base to the back of the head, and it looks like a chisel on a squarer skull.

Once you have seen the difference on two birds, you will not need any other mark. Before then, photograph the bird in profile and compare bill length to the width of the head in the picture.

2. Outer tail feathers#

The outermost tail feathers are white on both species, but the pattern differs:

• Downy: black bars, spots or dashes across the white outer tail feathers.
• Hairy: clean, unmarked white.

You see this best when the bird spreads its tail landing, or when it props the tail against bark and the outer feathers fan slightly. In poor light, use the profile bill instead. In the Pacific Northwest both species run darker and dingier than the eastern birds, so the tail mark is less crisp there and the bill is doubly worth relying on.

3. Size, with a reference object#

A Downy is 6 to 6.5 in and about 27 g. A Hairy is 9 to 10 in and about 62 g, so it is not a marginally larger bird, it is more than twice the mass. Size alone fails in the field because there is nothing to compare against, so use the feeder itself: a standard square suet cage is about 5 in across the face. A Downy fits it, extending a little past the top and bottom. A Hairy overhangs the same cage by an inch and a half at each end, and often looks awkward on it.

4. Voice#

The Downy's call note is a soft, flat pik, and its whinny is a descending run of notes that falls away at the end. The Hairy's note is a sharper, louder peek with more snap to it, and its rattle stays level in pitch rather than dropping. If you can only hear the bird, the falling whinny is a Downy.

What a Downy actually does at your feeder#

Approach is stepwise. The bird lands on a trunk or a large branch 20 to 40 ft out, hitches around to the far side, moves closer in one or two hops, then drops onto the feeder. It does not arrive directly from the sky the way a finch does, and it never feeds on the ground.

On a suet cage it lands low, props back on a stiff tail, and works upward. Visits run 30 seconds to several minutes, far longer than a chickadee or a titmouse stays, because a woodpecker can process fat in place instead of carrying it away. On a seed feeder the pattern changes: it takes a seed, carries it to bark and hacks it open there.

Dominance sits in the middle of the pack. A Downy displaces chickadees, titmice and goldfinches, and gives way to Hairy Woodpeckers, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, jays and starlings. It is solitary rather than flocking, but it travels with the roving winter mixed flock, so it usually arrives in the same wave as chickadees and nuthatches.

Downies also cache, though less obsessively than the tits and nuthatches, wedging seed and peanut fragments into bark. Peak activity is the first two hours of light and again in the mid-afternoon, with heavy all-day use below freezing.

Food and feeder list#

1. Peanuts (shelled) Top
2. Suet Top
3. Black oil Yes
4. Hearts Yes
5. Peanuts (in shell) Yes
6. Mealworms Yes

The food preferences of the two lookalikes are nearly identical, which is worth seeing directly:

Top top-tier favorite Yes eats readily Some takes occasionally Rare rarely No not a feeder food

That similarity matters for a practical reason. If both species are in your area, food choice will not select between them, so the way to give the smaller bird a protected supply is geometry, not menu. At 27 g a Downy moves through the mesh of a caged feeder without difficulty. A 62 g Hairy does not.

Three setups cover the species:

• A suet cage with a tail board. The extension below the cage gives the stiff tail something to brace on, and it visibly lengthens visits. Never use a plastic mesh bag for fat: feet and tongues get caught in it.
• A wire peanut feeder. Shelled peanuts are a top-tier Downy food and are the single best way to add a second woodpecker station away from a monopolised suet cage. Detail on handling in peanuts for birds.
• A sunflower tube or hopper. Optional, but they use both.

Fix the suet where possible rather than hanging it on a long swinging wire. A cage screwed to a trunk or fixed against a post gets substantially more woodpecker use than the same cage swinging free.

Diagnosing an empty suet cage#

1. Rancid or melting fat. Rendered suet softens and sours above roughly 25 °C and birds abandon it early. Use a no-melt cake in summer, or take it down. Background in suet for birds and homemade suet recipes.
2. Starlings. A flock strips a cake in a morning and a Downy will not queue. Switch to an upside-down cage: Downies feed inverted without complaint and starlings largely will not. See starlings.
3. Squirrels. A cake vanishing overnight is not birds. That is a baffle problem.
4. No dead wood. Woodpeckers need standing dead limbs for nesting and roosting. A yard of pruned ornamentals with every dead branch removed supports far fewer than one that leaves a snag standing. See native plants and cover.
5. Nesting. Late April through May, visits fall away every year. Nothing is wrong.

The Downy year#

January to April. Drumming season. Both sexes drum on resonant surfaces to advertise, which is why one may hammer your gutter or a metal chimney cap at six in the morning. It is communication, not damage, and it stops in May.

May to June. Cavity nesting in soft dead wood. The quietest stretch of the year at feeders.

July to August. Family parties. Juveniles show red scattered across the crown instead of the male's neat nape patch, and they beg noisily at the suet.

September to October. Each bird excavates a roost cavity for the winter and sleeps alone in it. Feeder use starts to climb.

November to February. Peak. Suet consumption in a hard freeze can double, which is the season covered in detail in winter bird feeding.

Frequently asked questions#

How do I tell a Downy from a Hairy Woodpecker?

Use the bill first. A Downy's bill is about a third the length of its head and looks like a stub tacked onto a round face. A Hairy's bill is nearly as long as the head is deep and looks like a chisel. Second, check the outer tail feathers: black spots or bars on the white outer feathers mean Downy, clean unmarked white means Hairy. Third, size, but only against a known reference such as a suet cage. A Downy is about 27 g, a Hairy about 62 g.

What is the best food for Downy Woodpeckers?

Suet, then shelled peanuts. Both rate top tier in our dataset. Sunflower in the shell, sunflower hearts, in-shell peanuts and mealworms are all eaten readily, and a Downy will work a sunflower tube perfectly happily despite not looking built for it. Millet is not eaten and cracked corn barely registers. In hot weather swap rendered suet for a no-melt cake, because soft fat fouls the breast feathers of a bird that presses against it.

Why has my Downy Woodpecker stopped coming to the suet?

Work through four causes in order. The suet has gone rancid or soft, which happens above roughly 25 °C and drives birds off before you can smell it. Starlings have taken the cage over. The cage swings in the wind, which a Downy tolerates far less well than a chickadee does. Or the local pair is nesting, which quietens April and May every year before a July return with juveniles.

Do Downy Woodpeckers eat sunflower seed?

Yes, readily, both in the shell and as hearts. They cling to a tube feeder port, take a seed and carry it to a branch or a bark crevice to hack open, in much the same way a nuthatch does. They are also frequent users of peanut feeders. If you only ever see one on suet, that is a reflection of what is on offer rather than a limit on the bird.

Are the red patches on a Downy's head reliable for sex or age?

Adult males have a red patch on the back of the head, adult females have none, and juveniles of both sexes usually show red scattered on the top of the crown rather than a neat patch on the nape. The male's nape patch is often split down the middle by a black line in Downies and more often solid in Hairies, but that is a supporting mark and varies too much to identify a bird on its own.

Sources and further reading

1. Downy Woodpecker Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Identification marks, voice and range
2. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Suet and peanut feeding for woodpeckers
3. Guide to North American Birds National Audubon Society Habitat, range and general behavior