Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

I’ve only seen one red-headed woodpecker in my life. In the passenger seat of a friend’s car on western Indiana’s Route 234, I was marveling at some local’s determination to mount small American flags on each utility pole along miles of roadway, when suddenly one of the flags struck me as more red, white, and black than red, white, and blue. “Red-headed woodpecker!,” I exclaimed, and my friend, who was driving, pulled a U-ie so we could get a good look. Sure enough, there was my “lifer” red-headed woodpecker, hammering away on a pole near one of the miniature flags. It’s appropriate that I almost mistook the woodpecker for one more flag; one of the bird’s many nicknames is “flag bird,” a reference to its bold, colorblock plumage. (Other fun nicknames include “jellycoat” and “flying checker-board.”)

Like the acorn woodpeckers that frequent my California yard, red-headed woodpeckers are known for caching food, and that’s what the woodpecker I observed in Indiana was up to. Their penchant for using utility poles is one of many reasons the species has had a tough time coexisting with our kind; through the 1960s, red-headed woodpeckers were routinely shot by utility company employees, with reports of one man in Kansas shooting 37 individuals off a single pole in one year. 😵‍💫

Interestingly, these flag birds are the only North American woodpecker species that routinely cover their stored food, generally by using bits of wood. Acorns and beechnuts are commonly cached, but the birds will even catch large grasshoppers and push them, still alive, into tight crevices from which they can’t escape so the woodpecker can return later for “fresh meat.”

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.