Red-bellied Woodpecker: the bird named after a mark you cannot see

The short answer

• The red belly is a faint pink wash you will see maybe once a season. Identify the bird by its barred black and white back and the red running from bill to nape.
• A Red-headed Woodpecker has a solid crimson hood and a solid black back with a large white wing panel. If the back is barred, it is a Red-bellied.
• Suet and peanuts are its two top-tier feeder foods. Nyjer and millet are worthless to it.
• It caches. Most of the peanuts it takes go into bark crevices within 100 ft of your feeder, not into the bird.
• It is a year-round resident across the East, Midwest and South, so a bird that vanishes has been driven off by something rather than migrating.

The red belly exists. It is a pale pinkish wash across the lower underparts, and on a bird pressed against a trunk it faces the bark. You may see it once a season, when the bird leans back off a suet cage. Everything you actually use to identify this woodpecker is elsewhere on it.

What you are really looking at#

A Red-bellied Woodpecker is about 9 to 10 in long and weighs around 72 g, which puts it between a Hairy Woodpecker and a jay in bulk. The back and wings are barred black and white in fine horizontal lines, a pattern old field guides called a zebra back. The face, throat and breast are plain gray-buff with no streaking. In flight a clean white rump patch flashes at the base of the tail.

The red is on the head, and its extent tells you the sex:

The voice is as good as the plumage: a rolling, throaty churr from a limb, and a chattering cha-cha-cha when two birds meet. Learn the churr and you will find you have had this bird in the neighborhood for years.

Red-bellied or Red-headed#

These two get mixed up constantly, and the reason is the name rather than the birds. Ignore the head and look at the back and wing.

• Red-bellied: barred black and white back, plain pale face and underparts, red confined to the top of the head.
• Red-headed: entire head solid crimson to the shoulders like a hood, back solid black, and a large white panel across the rear half of the wing so that a perched bird looks black in front and white behind. In flight it reads as blocks of black and white.

Juvenile Red-headed Woodpeckers have brown heads, which sends people to the Red-bellied page in their field guide. The white wing panel is still there, and no Red-bellied ever has one. If the back is barred, you are done.

Two other mix-ups: a Northern Flicker is brown, spotted below and usually on the ground, and a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker has a red forehead, a black chest bib and a long white slash down the closed wing.

Behavior at the feeder#

Red-bellieds do not arrive at a feeder directly. The usual sequence is a landing on a trunk 10 to 20 ft up, a pause, a hitch down the bark, then a drop onto the suet cage or peanut feeder. That approach is why a feeder in the middle of an open lawn gets ignored while the same feeder 15 ft from a trunk is used daily.

Visits are short. Ten to thirty seconds is typical, and the bird leaves with one item rather than settling in to eat. That is caching behavior, and it is the single most useful thing to know about this species at a feeder. A Red-bellied that finds shelled peanuts will run ten or more trips in a quarter of an hour, wedging each nut into a bark crevice, a fence post crack or a gap under a shingle, mostly within about 100 ft of the feeder. A cup of peanuts can disappear in a morning without the bird eating much of it.

At the feeder itself it outranks Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, chickadees, titmice and nuthatches, and it will hold a suet cage against all of them. Starlings and, on some days, jays push it off. It comes as a single bird or an established pair, never a flock. Peak activity is the first hour after sunrise and again in the last two hours of daylight, and in hard winter weather the dawn visit is the reliable one.

Its tongue extends roughly 2 in beyond the bill tip and ends in a barbed, sticky point, which is why a Red-bellied can strip the inside of a suet cage through the grid without ever getting a foot on the food.

Exactly what to put out#

Skip for this species: Nyjer, Millet.

Two foods do the work. A suet cake in a wire cage is the reliable year-round draw, and shelled peanuts are the fastest way to get a first visit from a bird that has never used your yard.

Practical setup, in the order that matters:

1. Hang the suet cage rigid, not swinging. Screw it to a trunk, a dead limb or a post, or hang it on a short chain against a vertical surface. A cage that spins under a 72 g bird gets one attempt and no second one. See suet feeders for the tail-prop designs that suit large woodpeckers.
2. Put out a quarter cup of peanuts at a time. A wire mesh peanut feeder with a half inch grid makes the bird work for each nut, which slows caching down and keeps the food in your yard rather than in a fence post.
3. Site it within 10 to 15 ft of a trunk or heavy limb. Height is flexible, anywhere from 5 ft up. Cover matters more than height for this species. The general rules are in where to put a bird feeder.
4. Add sunflower as a backup. They take black oil sunflower readily from a platform feeder, which also handles the fruit and mealworms they will take in summer.

Skip nyjer and millet entirely for this bird. Both rate zero, so a yard running only a finch feeder and a millet-heavy mix has nothing on offer that a Red-bellied recognizes as food.

It is around and not coming: what to check#

Work through these in order. The first three account for most cases.

• The suet has melted or gone rancid. Rendered suet softens above roughly 80 °F, runs, and turns sour. A woodpecker that gets one mouthful of rancid fat stops checking that cage. In heat, switch to a no-melt dough style cake or bring the cage in at midday. Our homemade suet recipes cover which fats hold up.
• Starlings are clearing the cage before dawn. If your suet lasts under two days and you never see a woodpecker on it, you have a starling problem, not a woodpecker problem. The starling page covers upside-down cages and the two-week adjustment.
• No mature trees within about 100 yards. This species needs large trunks and dead limbs for foraging and nesting. In a new subdivision it can take years to arrive. Leaving a standing dead limb, if it is safe to leave, does more than any feeder. See native plants and cover.
• The feeder moves. Rigid mounting is not a preference for a bird that braces on its tail, it is a requirement.
• A hawk or a cat is working the yard. Woodpeckers abandon a feeding station for a week or more after repeated pressure. Nothing to fix at the feeder itself.
• It is an acorn year. A heavy mast crop pulls Red-bellieds into the canopy for weeks in autumn. They come back when the acorns are gone.

Through the year#

Winter. Peak feeder use, November through March. A resident pair works the same route each morning, and cold snaps below about 20 °F put both birds on suet within minutes of first light. It becomes a daily bird in winter feeding counts.

Spring. Drumming starts in February and runs into April, in short even rolls, and the bird picks the most resonant surface available. Metal chimney caps, gutters and vent covers are all fair targets. It is territorial signalling, not damage, and it stops by May.

Summer. Feeder visits drop as insects take over, then spike in June and July when adults bring gray-headed juveniles to the suet. This is also when Red-bellieds take fruit and occasionally sip from nectar feeders, both occasional foods rather than staples.

Autumn. The caching season. September to November is when a bird will empty a peanut feeder repeatedly and store the contents. Fill smaller and more often through those months, and expect the stored food to buy you visits all winter.

Frequently asked questions#

Why is it called a Red-bellied Woodpecker when its head is red?

Because the name was assigned from a museum specimen in the hand, where the pale pinkish-red wash low on the belly is easy to see. On a living bird clinging to a trunk, that patch faces the bark. You get a look at it when the bird leans back on a feeder or stretches upward on a suet cage, and even then it reads as a faint blush rather than red. The red on the head is the field mark that matters: full crown to nape on males, nape only on females.

How do I tell a Red-bellied from a Red-headed Woodpecker?

Look at the back, not the head. A Red-headed Woodpecker has an entirely crimson head down to the shoulders, a solid black back, and a white panel that makes the rear half of the folded wing look white. A Red-bellied has a finely barred black and white back, a plain gray-buff face and underparts, and red only on the top of the head. Juvenile Red-headeds have brown heads but keep the white wing panel, so the wing still settles it.

What is the best food for a Red-bellied Woodpecker?

Suet and shelled peanuts. Both rate top tier in our data, and a bird that finds either will usually be back within a day. Peanuts pull them in faster because they can be carried off and cached, which suits the way the bird forages. Sunflower is taken readily but ranks below both. Nyjer and white millet are not food for this species, so a yard with only a nyjer feeder and a millet mix will never see one.

Do Red-bellied Woodpeckers migrate?

No. Individuals hold a home range all year across the East, Midwest and South, and the species has been extending its range northward over the last century. If yours disappeared in autumn, look for a local cause: a melted or emptied suet cage, a new cat, a hawk hunting the yard, or a feeder that now swings where it used to hang rigid. Natural food gluts also matter. A heavy acorn year pulls woodpeckers away from feeders for weeks.

Will a Red-bellied Woodpecker use an upside-down suet feeder?

Yes, but not immediately. Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers work out a bottom-access suet cage in a few days. Red-bellieds usually take one to three weeks, and some birds need the feeder hung near a trunk before they will try it at all. The payoff is real: starlings struggle to feed hanging upside down, so the suet lasts. Give the change three weeks before deciding it has failed.

Sources and further reading

1. Red-bellied Woodpecker Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Identification, range and natural diet
2. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Which feeder foods reach woodpeckers
3. Guide to North American Birds National Audubon Society Comparative species accounts used for the confusion pairs