A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2006 Downy Woodpecker

Range: Permanent residents through the southeast.

Habitat: Frequent small saplings that will not support bigger woodpeckers. Normally will excavate a hole for a nest in dead stumps or old fence posts. Occasionally will nest in a manmade house...5" x 5" x 10" with a 1 1/4 inch entrance hole, cut hole 2" below the top, mount at least 8ft off the ground in a wooded area..fill the house with sawdust <<packed as tight as you can get it>> so the woodpecker can pretend it is excavating.

Food: Wood boring, berry and fruit boring insects, spiders, grasshoppers, snails. Fruit and small berries, including poison ivy berries..They will come to feeders for sunflower seeds, suet, cornbread, cracked walnuts, peanuts, and doughnuts.

plants and trees that attract Downy woodpeckers to your yard...Rotting trees...berry bushes and trees that have small berries or seeds, walnut trees, poison ivy.

Downy Woodpeckers commonly socialize among chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and kinglets.

I love those little woodpeckers . They are here year around .

Additionally: That suet feeder you see in the second picture was 99 CENTS at Wal-Mart..The suet cake is the nutty kind..again 99 CENTS at Wal-Mart. The best $2 I have ever spent...The Suet feeder is mounted a little over 8 feet from the ground, on a big tree on the edge of a little thicket.