A cable company repairman walked up to our house, stopped and listened to a soft but resonant staccato drumming up in a tree. "What is that?," he asked my wife. She explained it was a downy woodpecker ...

If you’re seeking a New Year’s resolution role model, consider the downy woodpecker. Legendary ornithologist John James Audubon had this to say: “The downy woodpecker .??.??. is perhaps not surpassed ...

This week’s featured creature, the downy woodpecker, is a bird that is as common in suburban yards as it is in rural areas. It is so named for the downy white feathers on its back between the wings ...

To a woodpecker’s brain, drumming against a tree is a lot like birdsong. The findings reveal substantial similarities in the brain circuitry behind hearing and executing these two major acoustic ...

On crisp winter days, when the snow has glazed over into a hard crust and instead of muffling sound seems to clarify it, bird calls come clear and sharp as they skitter over the icy surfaces and ...

“Woodpecker,” we think, when we see a black and white bird at our feeder or on a tree trunk, lumping members of a diverse family together. But which one is it? Woodpeckers deserve a second look, ...

If you have heard a woodpecker pecking away at your gutter or home this fall, it may not mean you have insects in your wood. Connecticut is home to seven species of woodpeckers that live in forests, ...

Before we bought our house in the early 2000s, a home inspector noted woodpecker damage on the wood-framed fireplace chase. He didn’t have to dig deep to discover this. Not only was a yellow scare eye ...

The problem started last November. We woke up to a muffled, steady tapping noise on our bedroom wall. It had that weird, rhythmic but irregular quality, one of those mysterious kinds of patterns where ...

A downy woodpecker shreds the hollow stems of poison hemlock to feast on tumbling flower beetle larvae. Click here for larger image. Photo by Jeff Mitton. On a grey day in November, a downy woodpecker ...