WatchList Species Account for Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis)

Qualifies for the list as a Red List Species

Photo: USFWS

Roughly matching the distribution of the poderosa pine, the Lewis’s Woodpecker occurs during breeding in western North America from eastern British Columbia south to New Mexico, west to western California and east to Colorado. In the early 20th Century it expanded onto the plains of southeastern Colorado, apparently due to the presence of mature cottonwoods and cornfields. In winter it withdraws from the northern part of its range and typically occurs in oak woodlands and orchards. It occurs sporadically within its breeding range, disappearing for years at a time and then returning in some numbers. In summer it eats mostly insects in in winter switches to acorns and other nuts, often storing them in bark crevices. It engages in aggressive encounters with other species of woodpeckers over these caches. It favors open forests, ranging altitudinally from low-elevation riparian areas with cottonwoods to burns and ponderosa pine forests at higher elevations.

There are no estimates of its total population size, but Breeding Bird Surveys and Christmas Bird Counds indicates it may have declined by about 60% since the 1960s. The bird depends on standing large dead trees for nesting and old cottonwoods or power poles with desiccation cracks for winter storage sites. These are increasingly rare features of the landscape. The bird would be helped through not logging old-growth ponderosa pine forest or burned coniferous forest, retaining these in open, parklike stands, maintaining snags, and not densely replanting trees after cuts.