Red-Headed Woodpecker
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40 free Red-Headed Woodpecker trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The red-headed woodpecker is one of the easiest birds in North America to recognise and one of the oddest in its family. It hoards food for winter, snatches insects out of the air like a flycatcher, and defends its patch against birds several times its size. This quiz turns the best red-headed woodpecker fun facts into multiple-choice questions. They ask what the bird eats and where it hides its food, how pairs court and nest, where the species lives, how it got its scientific name, its place in poetry and folklore, and why its numbers have fallen. It is pitched at backyard birdwatchers, students and anyone who has spotted that crimson head on a fence post and wanted to know more. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up something new even when you guess wrong.
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Q 01Which insects do red-headed woodpeckers store alive, wedged into crevices so tightly that they cannot escape?
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers are kept as a living larder: the birds jam them into cracks in fenceposts and trees, then come back to eat them later.
Q 02Which nickname has the red-headed woodpecker earned for its crimson head, snow-white body and half-black wings?
Flying checkerboard
Flying checkerboard is the label its blocks of solid colour have earned, and they make it one of the most easily recognised birds in eastern North America.
Q 03In which Longfellow epic does a grateful hero give the red-headed woodpecker its crimson head?
The Song of Hiawatha
The Song of Hiawatha has its hero dip the bird's head in the blood of the magician Pearl-Feather as thanks for its service.
Q 04Which invasive bird, released in New York in 1890, competes with the red-headed woodpecker for nest holes?
European starling
The European starling competes for the same cavities, one reason given for the native bird's long decline. Its American story began with a release in Central Park.
Q 05Courting red-headed woodpeckers dodge around stumps and telephone poles in what looks like which children's game?
Hide and seek
Hide and seek around dead stumps and poles is how prospective mates court, and once paired they may stay together for several years.
Q 06Which tree killer, along with chestnut blight, handed red-headed woodpeckers a boom in dead trees to nest in?
Dutch elm disease
Dutch elm disease devastated trees in the twentieth century, yet every dead trunk meant fresh nest sites and foraging for the woodpeckers.
Q 07Red-headed woodpeckers eat the fruits of which plant, notorious for giving people an itchy rash?
Poison ivy
Poison ivy fruits are on the menu along with apples, pears, grapes and mulberries; about two-thirds of the bird's diet is plant material.
Q 08Red-headed woodpeckers often nest in smooth, bare snags, a surface thought to deter which predators?
Snakes
Snakes may be put off by the smooth trunk of a long-dead tree, and the woodpeckers often reuse such a nest hole for several years.
Q 09In the mid-twentieth century, red-headed woodpeckers hunting insects along roadsides were commonly killed by what?
Passing cars
Passing cars hit so many of the low-swooping birds that road traffic is counted among the reasons for the species' decline.
Q 10Territorial red-headed woodpeckers have been known to enter the nest boxes of which birds and puncture the eggs?
Ducks
Ducks get no protection from their size: the woodpeckers also remove other species' eggs and wreck rival nests inside their territory.
Q 11Which Scottish-born 'Father of American Ornithology' was inspired to study birds by the red-headed woodpecker?
Alexander Wilson
Alexander Wilson, once a weaver and poet in Paisley, went on to write the nine-volume American Ornithology after this bird caught his eye.
Q 12In 1840 Audubon reported 100 red-headed woodpeckers shot in a single day from one tree of which fruit?
Cherry
Cherry trees were not the only draw: the birds were so common that orchard owners and farmers used to pay a bounty for them.
Q 13What colour is the head of a juvenile red-headed woodpecker before its adult crimson feathers grow in?
Gray-brown
Gray-brown heads set the youngsters apart, and birds moulting into adult plumage can show a patchwork of the two colours.
Q 21Which Swedish naturalist gave the red-headed woodpecker its scientific species name in 1758?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus named it Picus erythrocephalus in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, joining Greek words for red and head.
Q 22Which English naturalist described and illustrated the red-headed woodpecker in a book published from 1729?
Mark Catesby
Mark Catesby pictured it in his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, the first published account of North America's flora and fauna.
Q 23The genus name Melanerpes, coined for the red-headed woodpecker, joins two Greek words meaning what?
Black creeper
Q 14Which high-fat feeder food is most likely to tempt a red-headed woodpecker into a garden in winter?
Suet
Suet is what brings them to winter feeders, though they also take seeds, corn, pecans and many kinds of fruit.
Q 15Which mountain range forms the western edge of the red-headed woodpecker's range across North America?
The Rockies
The Rockies bound the species to the west, and from there it ranges east to the Atlantic and south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Q 16The red-headed woodpecker breeds in the east-central United States and which other country?
Canada
Canada holds the northern limit of the range, where the bird breeds in open country along the country's southern edge.
Q 17At what time does the male red-headed woodpecker take over from the female to incubate the eggs?
At night
At night the male sits on the eggs, while the female takes the daytime shift for the two weeks until they hatch.
Q 18What do red-headed woodpecker parents do to fledglings still lingering in the territory after a few weeks?
They chase them off
They chase them off, which is less harsh than it sounds: the young fly well and can catch their own food soon after leaving the nest.
Q 19What does a red-headed woodpecker do when a nut is too big for the crevice chosen to store it?
Breaks the nut up
It breaks the nut up rather than reshaping the hole: these birds store food in ready-made cracks instead of digging their own.
Q 20Which Native American nation of the Southeast used the red-headed woodpecker as a symbol of war?
Cherokee
Cherokee people made the bird a war symbol, and it suits the part: it attacks rival nests and takes on birds far bigger than itself.
Black creeper is the literal sense, from the Greek melas and herpēs, a fair label for an inky-backed bird that climbs tree trunks.
Q 24Fossils of the red-headed woodpecker found in Florida, Virginia and Illinois date from which geological epoch?
Pleistocene
Pleistocene fossils up to two million years old show the species was already around through the ice ages.
Q 25In 2018 the IUCN moved the red-headed woodpecker out of its Near Threatened category and into which one?
Least Concern
Least Concern was restored after numbers appeared to stabilise, a change credited in part to better habitat management.
Q 26The red-headed woodpecker belongs to which bird family, shared with the sapsuckers and flickers?
Picidae
Picidae is the woodpecker family, placed in the order Piciformes, and its members dig the holes that many other birds later nest in.
Q 27Which wood preservative in newer utility poles may explain why red-headed woodpecker eggs laid there failed to hatch?
Creosote
Creosote was the suspect in a study where eggs did not hatch and young did not fledge in poles only three or four years old.
Q 28The nest cavity a red-headed woodpecker digs, often starting from a crack, is said to have the shape of what?
A gourd
A gourd is the usual comparison: an entrance about two inches wide opens into a roomier chamber that takes around two weeks to dig.
Q 29How does a female red-headed woodpecker appear to signal approval of a possible nest site?
By tapping on it
By tapping on it, she seems to give her verdict; the hole may be a new one dug mostly by her mate or simply his old winter roost.
Q 30Red-headed woodpeckers now seem to follow the supply of which nuts more than the beechnuts they once tracked?
Acorns
Acorns steer the birds' wanderings: a wood can be busy with them one winter and empty the next, depending on the crop.