Three-toed woodpecker

On Saturdays and Sundays I walk or ski a little farther than usual on the many trails around Marshall. About a month ago, just before the snow began to fly, I hiked up the Russian Mission trail to check on one of my favorite beaver ponds. I’d been watching the dam and lodge grow bigger over the past several seasons, and I wondered how it would look this year.

            The Russian Mission trail is studded with tall willows mixed with deep spongy tundra, and dozens of ptarmigan dressed in their fall suits of mottled brown and white were feeding on both sides of me. When they suddenly dashed for cover I sensed it wasn’t only me they were afraid of. Glancing at the sky, I watched a Peregrine falcon cruise overhead, no doubt eyeing one of those fluffy ptarmigan for a tasty meal.

            I was soon at the beaver pond and saw that it was almost twice the size it was last year. Since it was laden with a thick layer of ice, I thought I’d venture out on it to take a closer look at the beaver lodge and dam, both of which appeared much larger than they were in spring. Remembering what I had been told in Hooper Bay by old Kurt Bell, I grabbed a sturdy pole to use as an “ayagaluq,” or staff, for probing the ice, just in case there were any thin areas to contend with. Quite often in the fall these exist close to the lodge where the beaver have been swimming in and out of their various entrances.

            As I shuffled slowly across the ice with my staff, I heard a knocking noise somewhere in the distance. Stopping to listen, the sound of a woodpecker tappity tap tapping came from a stand of spruce on the other side of the beaver lodge. I wondered which of the five Alaskan species it might be, but when it remained hidden in the branches I figured I’d use an old trick to get it to come closer to me. Breaking a small twig from one of the dead trees in the middle of the pond, I began tap tap tapping, too, until the woodpecker became so curious it flew over and landed on the dead tree directly opposite the one I was tapping on.

            He was less than an arm’s length away from my face, and as I continued to tap and scrape the twig on the tree bark he peered at me so intently I could see a little spark of light reflecting from his left eyeball. I stared back at him and kept tapping, and he curiously cocked his head back and forth, as if to say, “Who the devil are you, and what do you think you’re doing tapping on my tree?” He did this for almost a minute, then fluttered off into a thicket of dead trees about twenty feet away. Before he flew, though, I clearly saw the telltale markings that revealed him to be a male Three-toed woodpecker.

            Three-toed woodpeckers (Picoides tridactylus) are unique among woodpeckers because, as their name suggests, they only have three toes for grasping. How and why this trait evolved is a good question, but for whatever reason it distinguishes them and their close cousin, the Black-backed woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) from the other three Alaskan woodpeckers that all have four toes.

            Something else that makes Three-toed woodpeckers unique is the way they peck and flake the bark off both live and dead spruce trees to get at any insects that may be hiding underneath. They prefer areas with a lot of standing dead trees, especially where there has been a recent forest fire, since it is in these trees where they find their favorite food, wood-boring beetle larvae. Both sexes of a mated pair often forage close to one another except during the nesting season when they hunt separately. In fact, a pair may remain together for more than one year, using the same feeding and breeding territory during that period.

            In early spring, when sunlight increases and the days grow warmer, the male and female begin hunting even more closely together. As nesting time draws nigh the male attracts the female to him by drumming on a hard surface, swaying his head back and forth and calling to her sweetly. In spite of an enduring tenacity to their breeding site, they both excavate a new nesting cavity, usually in the same dead spruce the old one was in. The mated birds are quite tolerant of humans around their nest and, if you’re quiet, you may observe some very intimate behavior. Once while in my canoe from not more than 8 feet away I watched them feed their young without even a hint of fear.

            After laying three or more white eggs, both female and male are dedicated parents and take turns incubating, the male taking the “night” shift (which in Alaska includes a part of the day). In two weeks the eggs hatch and both parents feed the nestlings until three and a half weeks later they are ready to leave their by now extremely confined quarters. Then they stand on the woody edge of their round hole, lift their wings and push off into the open air. They don’t leave their parents just yet, though; they hang around for another 4-8 weeks, learning what we humans call the “tricks of the trade.” 

            One of these tricks is colorfully described in the bird’s Yupik name, “puugtuyuli,” which means, “the one who is good at diving through the air with the intention of banging its head against something.” Think of it, right out of the nest and banging your head against a tree for the first time. What a surprise, what a wakeup call to life? Tappity tap tap!