The staccato drumroll of woodpeckers ringing across neighborhoods, forests and along wooded paths is as good an announcement of spring as the lengthening days and crocus blooms popping out of the ground.
Being shy on musical voice but very good in the hammering department, woodpeckers rap on resonant surfaces—dead trees, telephone poles, metal roof flashing—to announce their territories and attract mates.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! The louder and more reverberating a drumming post, the better. While only the male sings in most songbirds species, both male and female woodpeckers drum. Some pairs will duet, like the dueling banjos from the movie Deliverance. Just think
dun-da-dun DUN-dun, except all on one note.
Northern flickers are robin-sized woodpeckers with gray backs flecked with black and a black crescent on the breast. The male has a red cheek “whisker”. Flickers are common, year-round neighbors in lower elevations of the state, though they nest also in mountain forests. You can’t miss their very loud Uk-Uk-Uk-Uk calls this time of year.
Downy woodpeckers are also common back yard city dwellers as well as mountain nesters. These very small, black-and-white woodpeckers adapt very readily to life around people. The male is identifiable from the bright red patch on the back of the head. In almost any wooded area, the gentle tip, tap as downies forage for insects can be heard. This is not a territorial display but the sound made as the woodpeckers tap in the tree bark seeking food. The downy’s call, a chee-chee-ch-ch-ch-ch, which descends in pitch like a bouncing ball, sounds across woodlands and backyards as the birds fly from tree to tree.
Flickers and downy woodpeckers can be found throughout Colorado. Other woodpeckers, such as red-naped sapsuckers, have more specific habitat needs. Consult a field guide for where to look for the many different woodpeckers that inhabit Colorado.
It is illegal to harm or kill woodpeckers but there are positive solutions if they become a nuisance by hammering or drilling into your siding. Talk to your local birdfeeding specialty store, read "Woodpeckers Begin Springtime Drumming", or obtain the handout on woodpeckers from the Audubon Society of Greater Denver (303/696-0877), for ways of distracting them—such as putting up a flicker nest box (instead of letting the birds make a nest hole in your house).