I recently moved to Alameda and I started regularly birding Crab Cove as my “patch.” Before my move I had birded Crab Cove a few times and seen a Nuttall’s Woodpecker there. I did some research and found that others had seen them there all through the year, which told me they must nest there too. As an assignment for a birding class I am taking, I am supposed to observe a bird’s nesting behavior. I told the instructor I would observe the Nuttall’s Woodpecker.

A Nuttall's Woodpecker is small to medium sized (seven inches from tip to tail) compared to other woodpeckers. It has a black back and wings with fine white, horizontal bars. It has a black tail and a black and white pattern on the face. The male has a red crown patch while the female’s is black. This is a common difference between males and females in woodpecker species.

Nuttall’s Woodpeckers (named in honor of Thomas Nuttall, a British Naturalist, by an American friend) prefer to build their nest hole in large trees that have dead branches with a rotten core which makes them much easier to excavate. So, I started looking for dead branches near to where I had seen the birds earlier in the year. To my dismay, I could not relocate the birds and the trees all around the Nature Center had been meticulously trimmed of any dead branches. I was sunk!

Happily, a few days later I ran across a photographer I had seen several times in the park and out of nowhere he asked, “Would you like to see a woodpecker nest?” He showed me a walkway lined with old sycamore trees and there was a woodpecker hole in one of the dead trunks. I waited and within a few minutes a woodpecker came and continued its excavation. Unfortunately, it was a related, but different species, the Downy Woodpecker. The Downy is very similar to the Nuttall’s except it has a broad white patch down the middle of its back and is about an inch shorter in length.

I resigned myself to shifting my investigation to the Downy Woodpecker when after a few minutes I heard the distinctive rattle call of a Nuttall’s! It was in the tree above me. I shifted back a few steps to get a better look when I saw it enter a nest hole! The two species were nesting about 40 feet apart in different trees.

For the next couple of weeks, I watched each species finish excavating and then begin bringing food and removing fecal sacs (the chicks release their feces in a membrane which can be removed to keep the nest clean). The Nuttall’s and the Downy both have bills on the small side so they gather most of their food by searching the branches and leaves for insects rather than digging them out as many larger woodpeckers do.

If everything goes right several weeks later small heads will be poking out of the hole begging for food. If you look up to see a black and white bird fly over and then cling to the side of a branch, hear a rattle call or see wood chips flying from a dead branch you may see one in your neighborhood, as they have been reported from all over Alameda Island and Bay Farm too.

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Since retirement Jeff Manker has given himself the title of "Ornithangelist.” In keeping with his new title, he now teaches beginning birding classes, co-chairs the East Bay Conservation Committee, is a member of the Youth Advisory Committee and was a member of the East Bay Scrub Jays who were the winners of this year's Bay Birding Challenge for the Golden Gate Audubon Society.