Species Profile: White-headed Woodpecker


White-headed Woodpecker, Picoides albolarvatus

Learn more about this species in the Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America.

Introduction to the species

“… there is a surge of excitement as any tapping noise in a ponderosa pine stand is tracked down. Will that black and white head appear among the green needles, or will it be just another hairy, downy, or over-enthusiastic nuthatch?”
-Cannings & Cannings 1987

Dressed for a black-tie dinner, the striking White-headed Woodpecker adorns narrow stretches of pine-dominated forestland from British Columbia’s southern Okanagan Valley to the peninsular ranges of southern California. When it is present in the right habitat, the White-headed is hard to miss, but its extreme specialization makes the “right” habitat sometimes hard to find.

White-headed Woodpecker Skeleton 3-D Animation. Created for Steve by Digimorph. The Digital Morphology library is a dynamic archive of information on digital morphology and high-resolution X-ray computed tomography of biological specimens.

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