In the depths of winter, the sight of any birds flying around our neighborhood can be a cheerful experience.

 

By Bill Lawyer  

 

In the depths of winter, the sight of any birds flying around our neighborhood can be a cheerful experience. 

 

Even in mid-January, I have spotted the occasional flock of robins that have decided to postpone flying further south, probably in hopes that there will be enough warm days so that they might find a worm or grub below the grass.

 

People with bird feeders know that there are more than 20 species of birds that tend to spend their entire winter in Rye – generally with success, thanks in part to the generous provision of commercial sunflower and thistle seeds, and/or suet.

 

One type of bird that can winter in our Rye neighborhoods without depending on human-supplied food is the woodpecker. 

 

Back in 2011 I wrote an article about my love-hate relationship with woodpeckers. I described the propensity of woodpeckers – particularly the downy and hairy species – to try to make nests or roosting holes in the cedar shingles of my house. 

 

My response is to chase them away, tape strips of aluminum foil on the areas being attacked, then fill the holes – and hope that the perpetrators will find a more amenable host – preferably a dead tree — somewhere else. 

 

It’s just a matter of a few weeks in the spring and fall that woodpeckers make such pests of themselves. The rest of the time they go about their business of courtship, nesting, raising fledglings, and then getting through the winters.

 

All the species of woodpeckers are amazing in the way their entire bodies have evolved, enabling them to hammer their beaks into the trunks of trees without sustaining concussions or serious brain damage. 

 

Their hollow skulls are like football helmets that can absorb the shock of repeated drilling. Their feet are arranged with two “toes” facing forward and two back, so that they can attach themselves vertically on a tree trunk for steady pecking and drilling. 

 

And their tongues are designed to probe into the holes in the trees to find and extract the insect larvae that have been hatched from eggs deposited by burrowing insects, particularly beetles. 

 

Of the seven types of woodpeckers that can be found in the Rye area, three can be pretty much counted upon to head south in the winter. There, they can more easily find the insects that constitute their main source of food. 

 

These include the flickers, who often feed mainly on ants in dead logs on the ground, and the sapsuckers, which are not very common even in the summer. Even less common in any season are the red-headed woodpeckers.

 

This year, along with the downy and hairy woodpeckers, I have spotted several red-bellied woodpeckers. And while I can’t be certain, I think I heard the loud call and hammering sound of the largest local species — the pileated woodpecker — in the thick woods of the Marshlands Preserve. 

 

The downy woodpeckers are the smallest of the “wintering in Rye” species. They’re about five to seven inches high. The males and females look the same, except that the male has a small patch of red on the back of the head. 

 

As is the case with the larger species, downy woodpeckers have a rising and falling flight pattern as they move from tree to tree. 

 

Next in size come the hairy woodpeckers – so called because of the pattern of feathers, which is the main difference between them and the downy woodpeckers. The other difference is that hairy woodpeckers are bigger, but you can only really tell that if you see both species together or at least close up. Again, females have no red patch. 

 

Ironically, the red-bellied woodpeckers are easier to identify by their size and the red coloring on their heads than by the faint reddish tinge of their breast feathers. 

 

Red-bellied woodpeckers are 9 to 10 inches long. The males have more red on their heads than the females. While all species of woodpeckers make a variety of calls and “vocalizations,” the red-bellied are the loudest of the three, and make a distinctive warbling kind of sound.

 

As I walk my dog on winter days I almost invariably encounter one or two woodpeckers, pecking away, getting filled up on insects to stay healthy during the cold, dreary days.  And their colorful red, white and black feathers can cheer us up, right in our backyards.