The Downy Woodpecker, North America’s smallest woodpecker species, thrives across diverse habitats, from deep woodlands to suburban parks. Its diet is highly flexible, shifting dramatically depending on the season and environment. The bird’s small size, short bill, and nimble movements enable it to access nourishment that larger woodpeckers cannot reach, resulting in a varied menu of high-protein animal matter and high-calorie plant resources.
Primary Fuel: Wood-Boring Insects and Arthropods
The majority of the Downy Woodpecker’s diet, often three-quarters of its total food intake, consists of animal matter. This protein focus is most pronounced during warmer months and is important for developing young birds during the breeding season. Their preferred prey includes the larvae of wood-boring beetles, which they extract from beneath the bark of trees where the grubs have been tunneling.
The birds also consume a variety of other invertebrates such as ants, caterpillars, weevils, and spiders. Downy Woodpeckers are skilled at gleaning, which involves probing bark crevices and peeling away small flakes to find surface-dwelling insects and eggs. Their short, sturdy bill is perfectly adapted for this lighter, more precise foraging style rather than heavy drilling.
Their small stature allows them to balance on thinner supports than their larger cousins, enabling them to search for food on small-diameter branches, twigs, and weed stems. Research suggests a division of labor between the sexes. Males tend to forage more often on the smaller branches and stems, while females concentrate their efforts on the larger trunks and main limbs of trees.
Essential Winter Stores: Seeds, Nuts, and Suet
When insect populations decline in colder weather, the Downy Woodpecker shifts its attention toward high-energy plant matter and stored fat reserves. Approximately a quarter of their annual diet includes seeds, nuts, and grains, which become a much more significant source of calories during the winter. This shift is particularly noticeable when they visit human-provided feeders, where they are attracted to specific high-fat offerings.
Suet, which is rendered animal fat, is an important food source for these birds in the winter, providing concentrated energy needed to survive cold temperatures. Downy Woodpeckers are frequent visitors to suet feeders, using their specialized feet and stiff tail feathers to cling to the cage-like feeders. They prefer plain suet or suet cakes mixed with nut meats and sunflower hearts, as these provide the highest caloric content.
They consume a wide range of natural seeds and nuts, including acorns, sumac seeds, and dogwood seeds, and readily eat black oil sunflower seeds and shelled peanuts from feeders. Unlike seed-cracking birds, Downy Woodpeckers cannot split seeds in their bill. They must take a seed to a nearby crevice in a tree trunk, wedge it securely, and then hammer it open to access the nutritious kernel inside.
Seasonal Variety: Sap, Berries, and Opportunistic Feeding
Beyond insects and winter stores, Downy Woodpeckers demonstrate opportunistic feeding behaviors. Tree sap is one such resource, which they consume by lapping it up from existing openings in the bark. They are not true sapsuckers, but they will readily take advantage of holes drilled by their cousins, the Sapsuckers.
In addition to the sugary fluids, they consume insects, such as gnats, that become trapped in the sticky sap, providing both carbohydrates and protein. They also incorporate a variety of fruits and berries into their diet during late summer and fall when these resources are abundant. These include:
- Wild grapes
- Elderberries
- Virginia creeper fruits
- Poison ivy fruits
During the deep winter, an unusual but valuable food source is the insect grub found within goldenrod galls, which are abnormal growths on the plant stem. The woodpecker will chisel into the hard gall to extract the overwintering larva inside, providing a reliable source of protein when other insects are hidden. Occasionally, these small birds will also visit hummingbird feeders to sip sugar water for a quick energy boost.