Acorn Woodpecker Gangfights: A new paper (1 Viewer)

The team had hypothesized that woodpeckers would fight hardest for territories closest to their current home, but found that in reality, more complex social forces were at play.

"These birds often wait for years, and when there's the right time and they have the right coalition size, they'll go and give it their all to win a really good territory," said Barve.

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The radio tag data showed that some birds returned for several days to engage in up to 10 hours of hostile spread-wing displays, incessant calling, and intense fighting that was at times fatal.

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The sophisticated social behavior was also seen in the fact that the battles attracted large crowds, some traveling as far as three kilometers to see the action.

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The birds came for up to an hour a day to watch the fights, despite many already having granaries of their own.

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etudiant said:

Presumably that means storage trees are a limiting factor for these birds.
I wonder whether there would value in providing artificial snags for them to use?

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Nutcracker said:

Suspect availability of acorns is more significant - they'll happily use utility poles for stores, and there's no shortage of them :eek!:

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