Picoides arcticus
| Conservation status | Local populations rise and fall with changes in feeding conditions, but total population may be more or less stable. |
|---|---|
| Family | Woodpeckers |
| Habitat | Boreal forests of firs and spruces. Favors areas of dead or dying conifers, and may concentrate at burned or flooded areas with many standing dead trees. Also in undamaged forests of pine, Douglas-fir, hemlock, tamarack, and spruce, especially spruce bogs. Frequents lowlands in north, mountains in west. |
Typical foraging behavior involves methodically flaking the bark off of dead trees, searching for insects. May gradually remove the bark from an entire snag; may forage this way on fallen logs as well. Also gleans insects from bark of live trees, rarely catches insects in flight.
3-4, sometimes 2-6. White. Incubation is by both sexes (male incubating at night and part of day), probably 12-14 days. Young: Both parents feed nestlings. Male forages farther from nest, may make fewer feeding trips with more food each time. Young thought to leave nest about 25 days after hatching. 1 brood per year.
Both parents feed nestlings. Male forages farther from nest, may make fewer feeding trips with more food each time. Young thought to leave nest about 25 days after hatching. 1 brood per year.
Mostly insects. Feeds mainly on the larvae of wood-boring beetles; also eats other insects, spiders, some fruits and nuts.
Many aggressive displays, with complex harsh calls; some of these displays may also be used in courtship. Nest site is in cavity in dead tree or stub, usually conifer such as spruce or pine, sometimes birch or other deciduous tree; occasionally in live tree or utility pole. Usually 2-15' above ground, rarely 50' or higher. Cavity excavated by both sexes, with male often doing most of work. Bark usually cleared away from area around entrance hole.
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.
Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.
Many birds, such as owls and woodpeckers, thrive in forest habitats created after fire. But the hotter, bigger, more destructive megafires out West might be too much even for them.
After wildfires, grasslands and deciduous woodlands are replacing evergreen boreal forest and transforming the state's terrain and ecology.
If approved, the Trump administration's plan would weaken the law in a number of ways, including stripping protections for birds on the brink.
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