Medium-sized woodpecker with a large red head and a big chisel-like bill. The back is black with white wing patches. The belly is white and unstreaked. Sexes alike.
Juveniles have a brown head, a dingy belly, and a blackish brown back.
Sometimes stores extra food, like this acorn, in caches by jamming the food item into the bark or wood of a tree.
Adults have large red heads and a black-and-white body. Like other woodpeckers forages on tree trunks, but also catches insects in air.
In flight, adult has large white patches on the inner wings, contrasting with the black outer wings.
As immatures molt into adult plumage they can have mixed brown and red on the head and show black bars in the white wing patches.
In flight, juvenile also shows large white wing patches, but with two black bars across them.
Juveniles have a brown head, but start acquiring adult coloration in February.
Clings to fence posts either to probe for food or as a perch from which to sally out after flying insects. Young birds are mostly brownish with black bars on the white wing patches.
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Red-headed Woodpeckers are medium-sized woodpeckers with fairly large, rounded heads, short, stiff tails, and powerful, spike-like bills.
Smaller than a Northern Flicker; about the size of a Hairy Woodpecker.
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