Editor's note: This is an edited excerpt from Paul Bannick's new book, "Woodpecker: A Year in the Life of North American Woodpeckers." (Published by Braided River, an imprint of Mountaineers Books, $39.95).
IN THE EARLY spring as night's darkest hour melts to dawn, you can hear the haunting calls of owls, soon followed by the coos of doves, and gradually joined and replaced by harmonious singing from secreted performers in every direction. The high-pitched melodic trills of robins below, the ascending flutelike calls of thrushes above, the accelerating whistling of warblers, and the cheerful song of wrens surround you. Each adds to a sense of peace as their exquisite songs blend as one choir, making it difficult to separate one singer from another until a primal beat from the heart of the forest adds rhythm to the mix.
The woodpecker's pulsing cadence shifts the mood from transcendent to urgent. At moments of their choosing, these birds demand to be noticed. They raise crowns of gold or scarlet as they bob, sway and scream, and find the most resonant objects to strike, drumming signature beats with their impressive bills.
Woodpeckers are deliberate. They drop or dart through the air and scramble up the vertical face of trees like the most skilled climbers, balancing the weight of stocky bodies between the anchor points of a stiff tail and the claws of large feet. These "tools" propel them up trees before they reanchor. To close distances quickly while flying, they pull their wings against their body, lower their head, and free fall as they weave between blossoms, twigs, limbs and trunks like heavy arrows with bright feathered shafts. Intricately marked wings flash open like capes to break their fast fall and impress their rivals or mates.
Woodpeckers capture our attention with their charismatic and at times seemingly playful and whimsical ways, belying their mission as essential agents of transformation in the places they inhabit.
Every natural place is ephemeral and constantly transitioning. A favorite wildflower meadow might become a savanna as it gains isolated aspen or pine. Savannas become woodlands, which fill out as forests until fires or storms open them up again. Still, trees alone do not attest to the richness of habitat until you hear the woodpecker's drumbeat, the heartbeat of the forest. With each successive habitat change, woodpeckers enable the lives of dozens of species that can and will thrive in that specific place only with the woodpecker's handiwork. They do this first by carving cavities into trees. The wood chips hit the ground and retain water, which helps seeds germinate and amphibians survive. Finished cavities provide shelter not only for the woodpeckers themselves but also for dozens of other animals that cannot construct their own.
Woodpeckers evaluate timber with their eyes and ears like a master builder before carving signature holes of identical dimensions to ensure a mate's satisfaction. Pajaro carpintero is Spanish for woodpecker and translates to "carpenter bird."
In China, children are taught that the woodpecker is the "tree doctor" for its role in eliminating forest pests. But this physician also senses rot in a tree's wood, including its heartwood, and figuratively breathes life into dying trees by surgically building nests that will later be used by dozens of other creatures -- birds, mammals, insects -- many of these serving as pollinators and seed spreaders, thus bringing even more life to forests.
And some woodpeckers encourage these trees to share their last energy by drilling wells to draw the lifeblood to the surface. This sap feeds the woodpeckers and facilitates the migration of hummingbirds by providing food when it is most scarce. These and other services make woodpeckers keystone species -- animals that positively impact the habitat in a way that is exponentially greater than their numbers might suggest and whose absence could lead to the collapse of an ecosystem.
Many woodpeckers are specialists, meaning they need habitat with trees of a particular species, size and age within stands of the right density or canopy cover. Such precise requirements make them indicator species for many habitats: their presence and relative numbers attest to the health of an ecosystem. Woodpeckers are also umbrella species in that when humans manage habitats to meet these birds' needs, they inadvertently protect many other life-forms dependent upon the same elements.
Consequently, woodpeckers are perhaps the most important living catalyst in creating forest diversity, and many iconic forest organisms could not be part of the assemblage without their presence. Woodpeckers fill such a vital role in ecosystems that they radiated and adapted to most parts of the world and to various niches, and in turn many other animals and insects evolved to take advantage of their work.
In addition to enriching the wild, these tree doctors help people by controlling termites, carpenter ants, grasshoppers, aphids, moths and caterpillars -- pests that can destroy or devalue homes, forest resources and crops. They help protect trees by reducing populations of spruce budworms and wood-boring, bark and mountain pine beetles. This work can prevent trees from dying, reducing the fuel load in our forests to promote natural fire regimes.
It is no wonder that such a consequential bird has been admired and portrayed in the myths, legends and cultures of people throughout human history, not only Indigenous Americans but also ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, Babylon, Persia, Africa and Asia. Woodpeckers have been seen as supernatural beings and are considered prophetic from Europe to Southeast Asia to South America. Indigenous American cultures liken their drumming to the Earth's heartbeat, and Norse mythology connects it with thunder, and by extension the god Thor. In China, the appearance of a woodpecker symbolizes good luck and represents new opportunities, creativity, optimism and courage. Woodpeckers earned such cultural importance for their instrumental role pumping life into the forests they inhabit.
WOODPECKERS HOPPED INTO my life in an unexpected place. As a young boy of 8 or 9, I peered impatiently through the kitchen window into the backyard, waiting for the drizzle to stop so I might escape my tame suburban home to a wilder place where I could watch more than American Robins.
Suddenly, a presumed robin caught my attention. As it bounced closer, the polka-dot breast, giant bill, bright red mustache and veins of orange on the tail and wings revealed it was a male flicker! With what seemed like an explosion of red feathers, he was gone. From that moment on, I read everything I could about flickers and other woodpeckers, and I realized how patience, attention and curiosity could make the common sublime. Instantly I became a woodpecker enthusiast.
Since that day, the call of the woodpecker has led me on many journeys from my backyard to distant continents and inspired me to rise before the sun so that their syncopated drumming might allow me to find them, follow them and learn about their mysterious lives before they disappear back into the trees. My fascination has only grown over the years as I noticed that no matter where I was in North America, as long as there were large live or dead trees or cactuses and surrounding natural landscape -- whether the boreal forests of Alaska or the tropical forests of the Caribbean islands -- there was at least one species of woodpecker to trigger my wonder and help me better see the richness around me and the woodpecker's role in enhancing it.
Woodpecker diversity brings wonder to us all. What other family of bird or animal might we see a few or several related species of on a single walk? So many related birds of different sizes, patterns, colors, markings, crests and calls coexisting in what could superficially be seen as a single landscape defies our perceptions of what constitutes a habitat and its boundaries.
Whenever I observed multiple species in a particular location, I learned how each pursued different prey, on different species of trees, at different heights. Their choice of where and when to nest also varied. The needs of each individual species helped me see a variety of habitats where I had previously seen only one, and assisted me in more clearly understanding the factors that enable their survival.
Because woodpeckers live in every treed habitat in North America, their life stories are in many ways the stories of our wildlands. Every woodpecker alters its own surroundings in ways that create homes for friends and foes, improves the health of natural systems and even benefits humans. To witness this ourselves, all we need to do is heed the sounds, follow the flashes of color and observe the vitality that follows in their wake.
My book contains an exploration of the lives of the 41 species of woodpeckers in North America, from the Arctic to the Caribbean, through four annual life phases, covering how they attract mates and create nests, how they find food for and raise their young, how the fledglings leave the nest and gain their independence, and how the birds survive winter. Along the way, I discuss the species-specific habitat components that woodpeckers need to successfully navigate each of these life phases.
In telling the stories of these woodpeckers, I focus my lens, narrative and anecdotes on the species and behaviors that are most representative, while also highlighting interesting exceptions and contrasts. I look most carefully at species that represent the most threatened or sensitive habitats. I hope that by sharing intimate images and stories from the more secreted moments of their life histories, I can motivate people to better appreciate their critical role in enhancing our natural world and perhaps inspire the long-term protection of these birds and the habitats that they rely upon.