This week’s column finds me on a cold and snowy forest service road in Northern Minnesota where only a single logging truck loaded with freshly cut timber has come down the road in the past 7 hours. I arrived at day break to a silent spruce and tamarack forest. The sky was uniform gray which is par-for-the-course since we haven’t seen the sun in weeks. All in all, it’s a typical winter day in the northland. The air is calm and cold—around 20 degrees F. Perfect conditions for a day in the woods.

What brings me to this far flung remote area is the American Three-toed Woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis). This medium sized woodpecker (8 inches in length) is the northern most nesting of all the woodpeckers in North America. It ranges throughout Canada and Alaska during summer but during winter a few make their way south to the northern reaches of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

I step into the woods, snow crunching under my boot. I walk a hundred yards or so, stopping every fifty feet to listen for the tell-tailed sound of this boreal bird–tap-tap-tap in an uneven succession. Right away, I find my first woodpecker but it’s not a three-toe. It is a Black-backed Woodpecker, a close cousin to the three-toe and also an uncommon woodpecker. In fact at one time the Black-backed and the Three-toed were considered the same species. To me they look so different that I am not sure how anyone could have thought these two woodpeckers are the same.

I move deeper into the forest, keeping in mind which direction I am traveling so I might find my way back to my truck. This is not a place to get lost in the middle of winter. I have my pockets stuffed with food and water, extra gloves and hat. My cell phone only works when I get near the road so I am prepared as well as I can be. For once I think, I which I had a hand held GPS.

A flock of fifty or more Black-capped Chickadees finds me and gathers above my head on the branches of the trees to check me out. They give their “fee-bee” and “chickadee” calls over and over then move off into the forest. I love the chickadees energy and tenacity. Off in the distance I can hear the faint tapping and pealing of tree bark. I move closer and sure enough it’s the American Three-toed Woodpecker that I have come to photograph. I lift my camera and tripod off my shoulder and start to set up.

Most woodpeckers have four toes on each foot, however evolution has lead to the loss of the first toe, called a hallux, in the American Three-toed Woodpecker, hence the name. There are woodpeckers in the Old World (Europe) which have three toes which is why ours is called the “American” Three-toed. In the New World (the Americas) the only other woodpecker with three toes is the Black-backed Woodpecker.

The American Three-toed Woodpecker inhabits dense boreal conifer forests and favor mature or older growth forest with plenty of standing dead or dying trees. They also like areas where fire and insect disease have taken their toll on the trees. One look around and anyone can see the trees in this part of forest are all dead and the woodpeckers are concentrating their efforts on these trees. They are feeding on the larval stage (grub) of a bark beetle. The woodpeckers chisel off small sections of bark to reveal the tiny grub hidden in the larval galleries in the cambium layer of the tree. In just one minute I recorded a single woodpecker exposing and eating 6 grubs.

I pull out my pocket knife and pry off a small flake of bark myself. I am able to find 3 grub in less than a minute. The woodpeckers are much more efficient than I. By my calculations a single woodpecker can gather about 5 grub per minute which is about 300 per hour. In the 7 hours I have been watching and photographing these birds they took only one break which lasted less than 5 minutes. So over the past 7 hours each bird found and consumed a little over 2,000 grubs. Not a bad day at work for these birds. I often think what our insect population would be like if it weren’t for the birds who are constantly feeding on insect eggs, larva and adults.

By the middle of the afternoon its getting too dark to photograph, as it does at this time of the year in the northland. I gather up my camera gear and head back to my truck. The woodpeckers don’t miss a beat. Even in the ensuing darkness they are still chiseling away at the bark and pulling one last grub before night. Until next time…