Woodpeckers are North American phenomena due to their abundance in the state and higher degree of visibility as opposed to a lot of other high population species.
Out of all the American states, Iowa plays host to 11 species of woodpeckers in both the shape of native and visitor categories.
It’s not that high of a number if you compare it against other US states and it has to do a lot with forestry percentage of the locality since woodpeckers mostly require woodlands for habitation.
According to a report from the United States Department of Agriculture, Iowa has only 8% of its lands covered with dense forests, thus so few available woodpecker species.
Others might tell you only 7 species are year-round natives in this location, experts suggest that up to 11 species can be located in different seasons!
[Native] 6 Types of Woodpeckers in Iowa
You’ll find these 6 native species all-year round in the state of Iowa around their local habitats as described for each of the woodpeckers. Make sure not to get too close to discomfort them!
Pileated Woodpecker
Source: @jaywestendorf6310
- Scientific Name: Dryocopus pileatus
- Size: 40 to 49 cm (16 to 19 in)
- Locality: North America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: Late March and early April
If I have to begin my list of woodpeckers in Iowa, it must place the Pileated Woodpecker at the top since it’s the largest native of the state with the highest percentage of sightings. Out of the two subspecies, the Northern Pileated Woodpecker is the one that’s more available in the state. These are non-migratory birds who prefer to reside in the same locality in pairs.
Recognition
Visually speaking, Woody Woodpecker was designed after this species in particular – with the red mohawk on the head. However, the feather colors are much different from the cartoon as it has deep black plumage and white accents around the neck. This white reaches up to the face, generating stripes with black. The bills are strongly built and colored into charcoal-gray.
Habitat
In Iowa, this species can be found in great quantities around the mature forests and parks that are dense with tall trees. The reason for mature forests to be their home has more to do with their nesting habits. They pick deadened trees to dig out cavities for mating and incubation. One nest is used each year until they move on to a new one the following season.
Red-Headed Woodpecker
Source: @davewayne105.7
- Scientific Name: Melanerpes erythrocephalus
- Size: 19 to 25 cm (7.5 to 9.8 in)
- Locality: Temperate North America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: Second week of May to third week of August
A few of the woodpeckers in the Iowa region carry red patches at different parts of the body, out of them the Red-Headed Woodpecker strikes out the most with their captivating top part. It doesn’t have any variants or clades and not even subspecies in any part of the world. This species was featured in the US 2-cent postage stamp back in the 90s and early 2000s.
Recognition
Apart from the red head, this species of woodpeckers is duo-toned. Meaning, the back feathers encompassing the wings are covered in black in general. The abdomen region is a snowy white with some minor highlights of a pale golden. Wings have layers of white within them and it’s visible even when they’re not spreaded open. The beaks are quite long and strong.
Habitat
The Red-Headed Woodpecker’s stay is divided into two seasons even in Iowa. For instance, the warmer days are spent mostly in the western part of the state for breeding purposes. However, the eastern population resides there all year-long. Much like most other woodpeckers, this species as well lives in tree cavities and utilizes it for stashing food supplies aside from breeding.
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Source: @ricardoguise
- Scientific Name: Melanerpes carolinus
- Size: 22.85 to 26.7 cm (9.00 to 10.51 in)
- Locality: Eastern United States
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: Spring and Summer
This species is quite an extrovert when it comes to roaming around near human habitats. Thus, residents of Iowa may often find it in their garden or backyard looking for larvae. It’d be quite a sad sighting because they only act this way only when deforestation has reduced their natural habitat zones. Otherwise, they’d pick out such larvae from tree trunks or consume fruits and berries.
Recognition
Don’t confuse the Red-Bellied Woodpecker with its cousin the Red-Headed Woodpecker because of the similarity in red head patches. The former has a much lighter, orange-ish shade of red and it doesn’t even cover the entire head, rather restricted to the nape. Also, the dirty white belly shows a slight patch of red and the black back feathers are textured with white.
Habitat
Red-Bellied Woodpeckers in Iowa tend to plant their nests in trees that are placed on opening lands. For most parts, dead tree barks are the ideal surfaces to dig out the hole that the birds can call home. They initially check for its suitability by knocking rapidly using their sharp beaks. Apart from Iowa, it’s commonly observed in Wisconsin and surrounding regions as well.
Downy Woodpecker
Source: @asherleephotography
- Scientific Name: Dryobates pubescens
- Size: 14 to 18 cm (5.5 to 7.1 in)
- Locality: North America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: January to March
Downy Woodpeckers are agro-friendly species of North America that consumes European corn borer, a moth that annually costs around $1 billion to the US agricultural industry. It has 7 recognized subspecies spreaded all across the continent and a handsome proportion is found residing in Iowa. This species shares the same genus with two other sister clades of woodpeckers.
Recognition
It’s a white-bellied small bird with black feathers covering up around 50% of its entire plumage. Chest and belly are white-colored and the patterns on the wings are made up with the two mentioned colors alone. Even the face sides show horizontal stripes with an extrusion of a tiny, black and powerful pair of beaks. Male birds are signified with a red patch on the nape.
Habitat
This smallest woodpecker species of the continent mainly inhabits the regions with forests and sufficient trees, thus their absence from the desert areas is self-explanatory. In Iowa, these birds search out dead trees and both of the sexes dig-out a cavity together to form a nest. They tend to remain stationary in these zones aside from the northern population who migrate toward the south during winter.
Hairy Woodpecker
Source: @audrey.kali
- Scientific Name: Leuconotopicus villosus
- Size: 18 to 26 cm (7.1 to 10.2 in)
- Locality: All over the Americas
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: February to June
Many either mistake Hairy Woodpeckers for Downy or assume that these two are closely related. To tell you the truth, they’re not genealogically connected at all and the former is diversified within the species itself with 17 subspecies. But still it’s astounding that they share almost identical behaviors and characteristics, thus knowing their visuals precisely is of essence for bird watchers.
Recognition
The reason for placing the Hairy Woodpecker right next to the Downy Woodpecker is their odd resemblance in feather color and texture. However, the Hairy species is slightly larger in size and the wing textures are less recurrent. Also, the beaks are also a little longer and firmer than Downy so these could be your tells to separate between the two birds if located in Iowa.
Habitat
Hairy Woodpecker’s distribution is very widespread – in the north it reaches the tundra regions of Canada while in the south, the fringes of Central America are touched down. Just like regular woodpeckers in Iowa, they too excavate crevices out of dead trees and mate as well as incubate inside. General winter migration from cooler to warmer or higher altitude to lower is detected.
Northern Flicker
Source: @marcphotogram
- Scientific Name: Colaptes auratus
- Size: 28 to 36 cm (11 to 14 in)
- Locality: North America and parts of Central America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: March to June
Northern Flickers look significantly different if you hold the previous woodpeckers as benchmarks for their physical attributes. Rest assured that it is INDEED a woodpecker, although it goes by almost 100 different names across regions and cultures. For instance, being upheld as the state bird of Alabama, the name that’s popularly asserted to this bird is “yellowhammer”.
Recognition
Visual discrepancies strike bluntly to the eyes with a brown-feathered body jacketed by leopard textures in black. Male birds are slightly deeper shaded in contrast and carry a red nape patch. The neck region has a black necklace and the brown covers up to the chest, leaving the lower belly white and undertails a vibrant orange. Their charcoal bills are sharp and sizable.
Habitat
As the species is divided into two shaft groups of red and yellow, Iowa’s most common occurrence of the two is Yellow-Shafted Northern Flicker. Openings beside trees or forests are the prime spot for these birds to inhabit. They’re even found in gardens or backyards searching for insects. Their nests are either tree cavities or bird houses even around human presence.
[Visitors] 5 Species of Woodpeckers In Iowa
Now we move on to the 5 visitor species of woodpeckers whom you may have the fortune of running into at particular times of the year!
Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
Source: @bchasen_nature
- Scientific Name: Sphyrapicus varius
- Size: 19 to 21 cm (7.5 to 8.25 in)
- Locality: Canada and the northeastern United States
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: April to July
The name ‘sapsucker’ has been attributed to this species because of its trait of puncturing tree skins and consuming tree sap as a primary diet. It’s not their only food though, because arthropods, fruits and berries are also their sources of nutrition. But this method of piercing timbers leaves behind wounds so grievous that a lot of the times these trees die gradually.
Recognition
Of the colored-belly woodpeckers, Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker probably hosts the most minimal signs if you compare the physical attributes to the name. It’s medium sized and doesn’t scale up like the Pileated Woodpecker even at full growth. Top half consists of white and black speckle marks as the bottom half replaces the white with yellow. =A red portion sits up over the head and neck.
Habitat
Despite a large number of sightings in the state of Iowa, Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker isn’t scientifically considered a native in this region. They belong more toward the north for breeding purposes and migrate toward the south during winter. This midwestern state falls in-between as a land of transition that offers sufficient food and shelter momentarily.
Lewis’s Woodpecker
Source: @collllleeeeen
- Scientific Name: Melanerpes lewis
- Size: 26 to 28 cm (10.2 to 11.0 in)
- Locality: North America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: Late April to July
This bird has been named after the explorer and surveyor Meriwether Lewis who spotted the bird in the greater Louisiana region. These birds aren’t afraid to show themselves out in the open and enjoy the clearings, which is quite contradictory to most other American woodpeckers. Its unique, gregarious feeding puts catching insects mid-air on display.
Recognition
Lewis’s Woodpecker doesn’t fit the description of a typical wood-dwelling woodpecker that you typically spot in Iowa. It has a black feather collection back on the wings and the frontal feathers are a dirty shade of red. Their neck has a collar of ashen colored feathers and upward the black head shows a deep red face behind those dark beaks.
Habitat
The range for this species lasts between the western to the central parts of the USA, making Iowa one of their visiting spots at particular times of the year. Mostly, the pine forests and their subsequent openings are the plausible foraging terrains for these birds. Similar dead tree cavity excavation patterns are observed as their nesting behavior.
Acorn Woodpecker
Source: @moustache.man
- Scientific Name: Melanerpes formicivorus
- Size: 19 to 23 cm (7.5 to 9.1 in)
- Locality: Southwestern USA, Central America and northern South America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: Late May to early September
Remember we mentioned Woody Woodpecker when we talked about Pileated Woodpecker’s looks? Well, the cartoon character’s sounds were inspired by this Acorn Woodpecker’s calling patterns. They’re currently suffering from habitat loss and thus the residents within its distribution range are constantly being encouraged to preserve oak and pine-oak stands.
Recognition
Acorn Woodpecker is actually a medium-sized species, although the short neck makes it look shorter than the other species. It hoists a black and white feather pattern before the bird watchers – black on the back and whites up front. Their facial whites are greenish and distinctly patterned. Both the sexes wear a red toupee, rendering the species conspicuous at first sight.
Habitat
It’s basically a bird native to Mexico and the US population is diverged around the western mountains. This has to do with their living pattern over 1,000 meters of altitude, inside dead trunk cavities. However, they do climb down that height at certain occasions and allow Iowan locals the pleasure of spotting one, although it’s not as easy as the other visiting species.
Red-Breasted Sapsucker
Source: @brian.aikens
- Scientific Name: Sphyrapicus ruber
- Size: 20 to 22 cm (7 to 9 in)
- Locality: West coast of North America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: April to July
Like most other sapsuckers, the Red-Breasted Sapsucker has a tongue endowed with hairy extrusions allowing them to collect tree sap most efficiently. It has two designated subspecies, one of which pays frequent visits to Iowa during their winter migration. Their feasting patterns include drilling a tree’s bark and returning later to collect the sap that has formed in the meantime.
Recognition
This guest species of Iowa has a red chest like Lewis’s Woodpecker, although the red is more neat for the bird in concern. Additionally, the head resembles the Red-Headed Woodpecker to a greater extent. Feather patterns of black and white looks somewhere in-between Downy and Yellow-Bellied Woodpecker – making it seem as though it’s a hybrid of all these birds.
Habitat
It’s a woodpecker of the coastal forests, and thus the most abundance lies toward the western parts of the continent. The breeding zones include forests of conifers and the variety can be quite a wide one. They’re highly reliant on trees not only for their knack of sap-sucking, but also to create cavities for nesting and breeding.
Black-Backed Woodpecker
Source: @hungrychez
- Scientific Name: Picoides arcticus
- Size: 23 cm (9.1 in)
- Locality: Forests of North America
- Status: Least Concern
- Breeding Season: June to July
Black-Backed Woodpeckers go by an alternate name of Arctic Three-Toed Woodpecker that tells about their behavioral pattern more than what they look like. It’s a unique distinction for the species to have three toes – an attribute shared only with two other woodpeckers. Due to its ability to withstand cold and not migrate due to the temperature drop, the ‘arctic’ title serves them accurately.
Recognition
From its name we could make out the fact that its wings as well as back feathers are made up with black tone. Aside from the white abdomen, there exists the area in-between as a bridge between black and white that’s turned into grayed out patterns. Over the white striped black face, the head lays bare a yellow marking at the nape to make the recognition straightforward.
Habitat
Boreal forests of the north, ranging between west to east are the hotspots for the species. There are quite a few nesting ranges surrounding Iowa and some of these populations often transcend inside the state to the delight of local bird watchers. They excavate nests every year inside the softened portions of dead trees. Experts refer to it as specialists of burnt forests due to certain characteristics.
Thoughts
This marks the point where we depart from our discussion on woodpeckers in Iowa. I hope it’s been an insightful journey for you where you got to learn new things about the local woodpeckers!
One thing I must address is the IUCN conservation status of the Iowa woodpeckers is that most of them show the tag of ‘least concern’.
While that may be true for the proportion of numbers, many of the species discussed here are rapidly declining due to numerous issues like deforestation and loss of habitat.
So, if you want more woodpeckers to accept your hosting in the state, you better work it out! It can be by planting trees in unused openings or simply putting up a bird-house with sufficient food – the choice is yours!
