Adult female. Photo: Daniel Arndt/Flickr Creative Commons
Picoides dorsalis
| Conservation status | Local populations vary considerably; usually uncommon, but may become locally abundant during insect infestations. Extensive range in remote northern forest could be diminished by effects of climate change. |
|---|---|
| Family | Woodpeckers |
| Habitat | Conifer forests. Often closely associated with spruce, also found in pine, fir, tamarack, sometimes mixed with deciduous trees such as aspen or willow. Favors areas with many standing dead trees, as after fire or floods. May concentrate in areas with big infestations of wood-boring insects. |
Forages on live or dead conifers, especially spruces. Often scales off flakes of bark to get at insects, and may gradually remove all bark from a dead tree. Members of a pair forage together at times, but usually separately while nesting.
4, sometimes 3-6. White. Incubation is by both sexes (with male incubating at night and part of day), 12-14 days. Young: Both parents feed nestlings. Young leave nest about 22-26 days after hatching, may remain with parents for another 4-8 weeks. 1 brood per year.
Both parents feed nestlings. Young leave nest about 22-26 days after hatching, may remain with parents for another 4-8 weeks. 1 brood per year.
Mostly insects. Diet is mainly wood-boring beetle larvae, also moth caterpillars and various other insects. Eats some fruit, and may visit sapsucker diggings to feed on sap.
Same pairs may remain together for more than one season. Nest site is cavity in tree, typically dead conifer, sometimes in aspen, in live tree, or in utility pole. Cavity (new one each year, excavated by both sexes) usually 5-15' above ground, sometimes 2-50' up. Adult birds often quite unwary around nest, ignoring nearby observers.
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.
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Location: 3612-18 Broadway, New York, NY 10031
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