Attracting these little backyard visitors is as easy as one, two, FEED! Seriously, when it comes to the Downy Woodpecker, if you supply them with the right feed, they will be return visitors all year round. Try Black Oil Sunflower Seed, Sunflower Chips, or Peanut Splits. But the most popular menu item for the Downy is suet! Suet comes in a variety of flavors, and the best part is they are really economical!
In winter Downy Woodpeckers are frequent members of mixed species flocks. Advantages of flocking include having to spend less time watching out for predators and better luck finding food from having other birds around. An often acrobatic forager, this black-and-white woodpecker is at home on tiny branches or balancing on slender plant galls, sycamore seed balls, and suet feeders. Downies and their larger lookalike, the Hairy Woodpecker, are one of the first identification challenges that beginning bird watchers master.
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