Red-headed Woodpecker

New Hampshire has always been at the edge of the Red-headed Woodpecker’s range, the core of which is in the southeastern and midwestern United States. This makes sense when you realize that this species typically nests on open areas with scattered large tress, including river floodplains and southern pine savannahs. When this species shows up in New England, it’s usually in habitats with similar structure, including parks, beaver ponds, and timber harvests with some trees left standing. Although there is usually one somewhere in New Hampshire each year (often first found at a feeder), it is a highly irregular breeder. The most recent nesting was in the early 2020s at Bear Brook State Park, but before that you have to go back to the early 1980s, and then the early 1970s. Red-headed Woodpeckers were probably a little more common a century or more ago when widespread forest clearing resulted in more open woodlands.