Deep Look
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Today's Deep Look: Acorn Woodpeckers!
🕑 Added 2018-06-13 04:28:22 +0000 UTC Knock knock. Who's there? A new Deep Look episode! Read on to get some details on the research behind the episode, as well as an update on how our Patreon campaign is going. Cheers!More About Acorn Woodpeckers
Have you ever wondered why woodpeckers pound so incessantly?
In the case of acorn woodpeckers -- gregarious black-and-red birds in California’s oak forests -- they’re building an intricate pantry, a massive, well-organized stockpile of thousands of acorns to carry them through the winter.
Over generations, acorn woodpeckers can drill thousands of small holes into one or several trees close to each other, giving these so-called granaries the appearance of Swiss cheese.
Acorn woodpeckers’ ability to reproduce in the spring depends on an abundant acorn crop the previous year. But oaks are finicky trees.
“Some years there are acorns all over the place,” says biologist Walter Koenig, of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who has studied acorn woodpeckers for decades at the University of California’s Hastings Natural History Reservation in Carmel Valley. “And other years there aren’t any acorns at all.” This is why acorn woodpeckers live where there are several species of oaks, he said, which increases the chances that they’ll have access to acorns.
Keeping a granary stocked takes a lot of work. So acorn woodpeckers live in family groups: four or five of them in something like a commune, with several males that are related to each other mating with several females that are related to each other but not to the males.
Young woodpeckers who aren’t yet old enough to mate help take care of the chicks when they’re born in the summer.
When a member of the group dies, young woodpeckers from other groups audition to join the group, in hopes of being able to start mating. These power struggles are loud and can last days.
“You get birds chasing each other, yelling and screaming at each other, grappling,” said Koenig. “They’re incredibly exciting.”
When one of the birds wants to eat an acorn, it sometimes pecks it open right in the hole where it’s stored. Or it might carry the acorn to a nearby tree and wedge it in a nook before cracking it open by pounding on it.
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