Photo by Mary Holland
.Red-bellied woodpeckers have a varied diet consisting of nuts, fruits, frogs, minnows, nestling birds, songbird eggs, invertebrates, sap, and nectar. At this time of year, acorns are a preferred food. While woodpeckers are well known for their ability to use their bills to drill into trees in order to extract insects, the use of their bills to extract the meat of nuts is less well known. Often, they will pluck an acorn off an oak tree and fly with it in their bill to a tree or post, where they press the acorn into a crevice. They then crack the shell by hammering it with their bill, allowing them to extract the nutmeat.
Red-bellied woodpeckers cache food year-round, but engage in this behavior more often during the fall. They return to their cached food throughout the winter. The list of items stored by this woodpecker includes acorns, nuts, seeds, fruits, fruit pulp, corn kernels, suet, peanut butter, whole peanuts, and even insects.