I have observed woodpeckers in action numerous times, but have rarely seen one capture an insect. On Monday, however, I managed to capture this image of a Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge with a tasty morsel of some sort.
According the the welcomewildlife.com website, Red-bellied Woodpeckers are one of three woodpecker species in the United States known for storing their food and protecting their stash. I suspect that the insect in the photo was consumed on the spot, but I have often seen Red-bellied Woodpeckers with acorns in their mouths that they then jammed into a crack in a tree for future consumption. According to the aforementioned website these trees, known as granaries, may hold up to fifty thousand acorns. (In case you are curious about the other woodpeckers that exhibit similar behavior, they are the Red-headed Woodpecker, a species that is present where I live, and the Acorn Woodpecker, which I believe is found in the western part of the United States.)
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
They don’t always use trees, either. Even though the title of this video mentions a squirrel, the description notes that it probably was a woodpecker, and later articles about the discovery supported that. One of my California readers went so far as to identify the exact location of the acorn stash, which was sort of in his neighborhood.
Wow! That is an amazing video. I was shocked to see how many acorns were stored in that antenna. I poked around a bit and found that a National Geographic scientist thinks they were stored by an Acorn Woodpecker.(https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/11/151113-antenna-cache-acorn-woodpecker-california/)
Wow! That tree can hold a lot of acorns! Fascinating post and photo, Mike! 😃
I’ve had the same experiences with Red-bellied Woodpeckers and what they eat, as they are plentiful here. But I never heard the term granaries nor had any idea how MANY get stashed away – wow! Thanks for sharing this info, Mike.
I think that Acorn Woodpeckers are the woodpeckers that stash the most acorns, as their name suggests, but Red-bellied Woopeckers do the same on a smaller scale.
Love to watch their behaviors!!
Interesting… I didn’t know that about Red-bellies. Thanks, Mike.
Nice Mike! Plus interesting information!
We enjoy our Acorn Woodpeckers in Calif. and their gregarious behavior and extensive granaries. Also, they look a bit like silly clowns with their markings, which animates their behavior. But I never knew red-bellied woodpeckers cached too. Fantastic photo, as always, as she munches on her snack. Wonderful jeweled glint in the eye.
I hope to see your Acorn Woodpeckers some day, Jet, which seem to be exceptionally cool in both appearance and behavior. I think that they are the woodpeckers with the biggest caches–our red-bellied woodpeckers, I believe, mostly cache their acorns by jamming them into cracks in the trees.
My morning walks on a lake are filled with acorn woodpeckers. If you’re ever in the area, I’ll take you there.
I’ll add that to the list along with the Camera Obscura. 🙂