North America's Darling: The Diminutive Downy Woodpecker

Found in every state in the continental United States as well as in most Canadian provinces, the Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) is certainly a crowd favorite.  Downies favor open woodlands, particularly deciduous forests along streams, but take readily to parks and backyards landscaped with a variety of deciduous trees; in many parts of their range, Downy Woodpeckers are the most likely woodpecker species to visit backyard feeders.  And with the distinction of being North America's smallest woodpecker, this diminutive darling is an undeniably "cute" bird.

In my neck of the woods San Joaquin Valley oak savanna, Downy Woodpeckers stick pretty closely to riparian areas: forest fragments along the Merced, Tuolumne, Stanislaus and San Joaquin Rivers offer suitable habitat, along with shrubby areas along Dry Creek, Del Puerto Canyon Creek, and other creeks and wetland areas with willows and deciduous trees.  Since my town is situated miles from the nearest river, planted on a dry [former] grassland between the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers, Downy Woodpeckers are replaced in my neighborhood by Nuttall's Woodpeckers, endemic denizens of dry oak woodlands (and, it would seem, suburban areas with mature shade trees and telephone poles).  So, it's always fun to watch one of these special little birds when we come across them in the "wild."

Small and agile, Downy Woodpeckers can exploit food sources - namely insects found along small twigs, stems and even weed stalks - that larger woodpeckers can't access.

During an extremely foggy (and bone-chillingly cold) day of birding at the San Joaquin River NWR over the weekend, we saw almost a full compliment of our local woodpeckers.  While the Valley obviously lacks the iconic hardwood forests of the East, and our picturesque coniferous forests are found up in the mountains to the north, east and west, the Central Valley is still home to an impressive diversity of woodpeckers and other members of the family Picidae (which includes woodpeckers, sapsuckers and flickers).  California's Great Central Valley was once a mosaic of grassland, wetland, oak savanna and wonderfully complex, multi-leveled riparian forests, providing niches for five or six woodpecker species.   

The nearly endemic Nuttall's Woodpecker (Dryobates nuttallii) and the garrulous Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) of the Southwest are closely associated with oak woodlands and riparian areas, while the unique green-and-pink Lewis's Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), another Western specialty, favors the open oak savannas and woods around the fringes of the Valley.  The widespread Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) is common in towns and wild areas alike all year, while the Red-breasted Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber) of the Pacific Northwest visits only during the winter months.  But next to the Northern Flicker, our little Downy Woodpecker is the picid that is most likely to be familiar to birders and backyard birdwatchers across North America.

Downy Woodpeckers look like a perfectly scaled-down model of the larger Hairy Woodpecker (Dryobates villosus), and many new birders struggle to tell the difference between them.  Hairy Woodpeckers, with their larger bills and larger size overall, are more likely to be found in the coniferous forests of California's mountains, along with White-headed Woodpeckers (Dryobates albolarvatus), Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus), and a couple more sapsuckers.  In the Central Valley, Downy Woodpeckers can be told apart from the similarly-sized Nuttall's Woodpecker by the presence of a white patch on their back; Nuttall's Woodpeckers lack this prominent white patch and instead have black and white barring across their backs.

With just a glimpse, through willow twigs and heavy fog, we can identify this as a Downy by the bright white patch on its back, and the proportionally small bill.