Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Secure Shopping

Ladder-backed Woodpecker
The Ladder-backed Woodpecker is black with white barring on its face. The male has a red crown patch while the female lacks the red crown patch. Both sexes have black wings with white spots and a black back with white bars. It is similar in appearance to the Nuttall’s Woodpecker of California. Within most of its range, the Ladder-backed Woodpecker is the only small woodpecker so marked. The most numerous member of its family in Texas, it replaces the Downy Woodpecker in more arid areas. Familiar and trusting, it frequents ranches, yards in rural areas and parks.

The Ladder-backed Woodpecker eats mostly insects, especially the larvae of wood-boring beetles, caterpillars and ants but also eats fruit of various cacti. It excavates nest holes in a variety of trees (mesquite, screw bean, palo verde, hackberry, china tree, willow, cottonwood, walnut and oak), usually 2 to 30 feet above ground. In some cases, saguaro, yucca stalks, telephone poles and fence posts also are used for nesting.

The Ladder-backed Woodpecker is a year-round resident in southwestern United States from California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas south into tropics. It prefers wooded canyons, cottonwood groves, pine and pine oak woodlands, desert scrub and desert grassland dominated by mesquite.
Ladder-backed Woodpecker Range Map

Visit Shaw Creek Bird Supply to see our selection of Woodpecker Feeders.