![]() ![]() The hairy woodpecker makes a sharp “peek” or “cheep” type call. Looking at the length of the bird’s beak is probably one of the easiest ways to distinguish one species from the other.Īnother way to tell these two birds apart is by listening to their calls as they are very different. Its length is only about a third of the length of its head. On the other hand, the downy woodpecker has a much shorter and stubbier beak. It’s also thicker and more dagger-like to look at. ![]() She may be reached at Read more of her Nature News columns online at and pikes-hikes.Another distinct difference between the two species is that the hairy woodpecker has a much longer beak. Susan Pike, a researcher and an environmental sciences and biology teacher at Dover High School, welcomes your ideas for future column topics. To me, this is why learning names, learning to identify and learning about behaviors is so much fun. The more I learn, the more I see. So, watch for both hairy and downy woodpeckers at your feeder. While watching, look for interactions. As part of the mimicry study, researchers looked at interactions between these two woodpeckers and found that hairy woodpeckers actually single out downies to pick on, so the similarity certainly isn’t fooling the hairy woodpeckers. Since learning this I’ve started to pay more attention to these two birds and have noticed the downies driving away other birds and noticed hairy woodpeckers plaguing their smaller cousins. Over time, downies that looked more like hairy woodpeckers were more successful at foraging, more likely to have more offspring that survived and so, slowly but surely, the species began to resemble the larger hairy woodpecker. April 2019 in Nature Communications) looked at millions of eBird observations (go citizen science!!), satellite data, and measurements of size and color variation in these birds and concluded that what linked the two species' similar features, more than anything else, was range overlap. This suggests that by looking like the larger, more aggressive hairy, the downy woodpecker is better able to hold its own against other birds, that other birds confuse the two and are more apt to back off from confrontation. This is born out by observations of interactions at the birdfeeder where downy woodpeckers can dominate the feeder, successfully chasing away species of similar or larger size. As with all adaptations like mimicry, this wasn’t intentional on the part of the birds. The Hairy Woodpecker is more closely related to the very different looking Red-cockaded Woodpecker, while the Downy is closer to Nuttall’s Woodpecker.” (Living Bird summer 2019).Ī recent study (Eliot Miller et al. Their genetic lineages split off from a shared ancestor over 6 million years ago-about as far back as chimps and humans split. despite being look-alikes, these two species are not that closely related. I was thinking that these two woodpeckers must be closely related, their appearance and habitat requirements being so similar, but it turns out these two species are an excellent example of mimicry between unrelated species. According to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology “. There are other differences - the downies have some black barring on their outer tail feather which hairy woodpeckers lack as well as subtle differences in the amount of white on their necks and the red patch on the nape, but, seriously, go with bill size. a diminutive 6 inches). But when they aren’t together, size can be difficult to determine. The easiest way to tell these two woodpeckers apart is bill size. The downy’s is small and almost triangular, it is about a third of the length of the downy’s head. The hairy’s is much larger, almost as long as its head and, where the downy’s bill looks dainty, the hairy’s is robust. It took me awhile to become confident in my identification, but once I started looking at bill size I felt like a pro. Hairy woodpeckers also come to my bird feeder, swooping in as the downy woodpeckers scatter. They are almost identical, but seen together it is easy to see that the hairy is much larger than the downy (9 inches vs. Being able to tell a downy from a hairy woodpecker is one of those "rites of passage" for a birdwatcher. I suppose before that comes knowing that these two woodpeckers live around here and can be difficult to tell apart. Downy woodpeckers are the most common woodpecker in New England. They are cute little woodpeckers that like suburbia, mostly for our wonderful suet feeders (they also like black oil sunflower seeds). In the winter, these woodpeckers form mixed flocks with those other iconic winter bird feeder birds - chickadees, nuthatches and titmice. I’ve been watching a trio of downies all winter at my feeders, they swoop in with the chickadees and seem to spend their time divided between the suet feeder and the old locust tree that holds the feeders, looking for insects as they work their way up the branches. ![]()
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