Animal
Downy woodpecker
Dryobates pubescens
The smallest woodpecker in North America — black-and-white plumage with males having a small red patch on the back of the head. Year-round resident across Staten Island, common at every wooded habitat from the Greenbelt to residential street trees with sufficient deadwood. The most-frequently-encountered woodpecker on the borough; quiet drumming and the sharp 'pik' call are common Greenbelt sounds.
Scientific
Dryobates pubescens is a 1 oz woodpecker — small enough to forage on plant stems and weed seed-heads in addition to typical woodpecker substrates. Diet ~75% insects (especially wood-boring beetle larvae and gall-inducing insects), supplemented with seeds and small fruits.
Excavates roost and nest cavities in dead and dying wood. These cavities, after the woodpecker has used them, become important shelter and nesting habitat for chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, screech owls, and many other secondary cavity-nesting species. Woodpeckers are ecosystem engineers in this sense — they create habitat the rest of the bird community depends on.
On Staten Island
Year-round resident, borough-wide. Forest-edge habitats, residential blocks with mature trees, the Greenbelt’s interior, parks with dead-tree retention all support populations. Drumming activity peaks in late winter through spring as territorial signals.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Substrate of: [[staten-island-greenbelt-conservancy]]
- Member of: [[animal]]
- Contained by: [[staten-island]]
Sources
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology eBird and species accounts
- NYC Audubon SI bird-survey records
Rooted in life.
What links here, and how
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Scientific
substrate of
- Black-capped chickadee chickadees are major secondary cavity-nesters, frequently using woodpecker-excavated cavities for nest sites
- Eastern screech owl screech owls reuse old woodpecker cavities for nesting; cavity-availability ecology connects woodpecker and owl populations
shares approach with
- Northern flicker the borough's two most-common woodpeckers — flicker mostly ground-foraging on ants, downy bark-foraging on insects in wood
3 inbound links · 3 outbound