What Do Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers Eat?

Where there are trees, there are birds. Just about anybody can identify a woodpecker by its distinctive knocking or pecking noise. If you are lucky enough, you can follow the rhythmic chatter and locate the type of woodpecker. You are extremely fortunate if the bird you have spotted is an ivory-billed woodpecker -- as these birds are at a minimum extremely rare, and may in fact be extinct.

  1. Habitat

    • The ivory-billed woodpecker once ranged from the southeastern United States to Cuba. It prefers swampy bottom-land hardwood forests, rich with deep cover and old growth, a perfect location for the beetle larvae it prefers to eat. The ivory-billed woodpecker was last spotted in 2005 at "Big Woods", a 500,000-acre conservatory in Arkansas, where a team of scientists have been enthusiastically studying this majestic bird. However, some experts have questioned the proof of those sightings.

    Feeding

    • In order for the ivory-billed woodpecker to reach the beetle larvae, it must strip the tight bark from recently dead trees. It accomplishes this by maneuvering its enormous bill in a way that no other woodpecker can. It hammers away at the dead tree, peeling away the bark. Because of their specialized diet and desire for solitude, this bird requires a vast area of mature, undisturbed forests where there are many decaying trees.

    Roosting

    • Beetles provide the main food source for ivory-billed woodpeckers.

      Ivory-billed woodpeckers have a greater food demand and, consequently, larger home ranges than smaller birds. They are known to have flown distances of at least several miles a day between favored roost sites and feeding areas. The trees most often chosen to roost and feed from include bald cypress, Nuttall oak, sweet gum, green ash and swamp pine. The two types of beetle larvae that populate these trees are the cerambycid and engraver, both wood-boring beetles.

    Fruits and Nuts

    • The ivory-billed woodpecker has also been noted to eat fruits and nuts, primarily available in the warm and moist climates of southern Florida and Cuba. Researchers have inspected the stomachs of a number of ivory-billed woodpeckers and found not only a variety of beetle larvae, but the fruit of the southern magnolia, grapes, persimmons, hackberries and pecan nuts.