Woodpecker - Distribution, Habitat and Movements

Distribution, Habitat and Movements

The woodpeckers have a mostly cosmopolitan distribution, although they are absent from Australasia, Madagascar, and Antarctica. They are also absent from the world's oceanic islands, although many insular species are found on continental islands. The true woodpeckers, subfamily Picinae, are distributed across the entire range of the woodpeckers. The Picumninae piculets have a pantropical distribution, with species in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Neotropics, with South America holding the majority of piculet species. The second piculet subfamily, Nesoctitinae, has a single species, the Antillean Piculet, which is restricted to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The wrynecks (Jynginae) have an exclusively Old World distribution, with the two species occurring in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Overall, the woodpeckers are arboreal birds of wooded habitats. They reach their greatest diversity in tropical rainforests, but occur in almost all suitable habitats including woodlands, savannahs, scrublands, bamboo forests. Even grasslands and deserts have been colonised by various species. These habitats are more easily occupied where a small number of trees exist, or, in the case of desert species like the Gila Woodpecker, tall cacti are available for nesting in. A number of species are adapted to spending a portion of their time feeding on the ground, and a very small minority of species have abandoned trees entirely and nest in holes in the ground. The Ground Woodpecker is one such species, inhabiting the rocky and grassy hills of South Africa

Picidae species can either be sedentary or migratory. Many species are known to stay in the same area year-round, while others travel great distances from their breeding grounds to their wintering grounds. For example, the Eurasian Wryneck breeds in Europe and west Asia and migrates to the Sahel in Africa in the winter.

Results from the monitoring programs of the Swiss Ornithological Institute show that the breeding populations of several forest species for which deadwood is an important habitat element (Black Woodpecker, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Middle Spotted Woodpecker, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, European Green Woodpecker, Eurasian Three-toed Woodpecker as well as European Crested Tit, Willow Tit and Eurasian Treecreeper) have increased in the period 1990 to 2008, although not to the same extent in all species. At the same time, the White-backed Woodpecker extended its range in eastern Switzerland. The Swiss National Forest Inventory shows an increase in the amount of deadwood in forests for the same period. For all the mentioned species, with the exception of green and middle spotted woodpecker, the growing availability of deadwood is likely to be the most important factor explaining this population increase.