The Woody Woodpecker (No) Show

I wouldn't call myself a hardcore birder, but I do keep a life list.  Perhaps because I'm so casual about it, I notice that there are some major biases on it in terms of which birds I see and put on it.  Raptors, which tend to be big and spend a lot of time soaring or perching prominently, where they are easy to see, are pretty strongly represented on the list.  So are waterfowl and wading birds.  One group of birds that I definitely notice wherever I go are the woodpeckers.  I've only got a fraction of my area's songbird species on my list, but I have all of the woodpeckers.

Perhaps it's because they tend to be kind of colorful and striking.  Or that their loopy flight patterns, up and down, makes them noticeable.  Or maybe I just hone in on the hammering sound of their beaks on the trees, which makes them easier to find.  They tend to be pretty common birds as it is, which certainly helps.  Whatever it is, I see a lot of woodpeckers when I go for a hike.

 Which makes it all the stranger that I always never see them in zoos.  I have seen three individual woodpeckers of three species at three zoos in the last three decades.  Neither of those zoos has woodpeckers anymore.

Why is that?  Short answer - I dunno.

Some thoughts?  Woodpeckers can be destructive, their beaks doing damage to exhibit structures.  They can be predatory towards baby birds, or at least aggressive, which might make them ill-suited to mixed-species aviaries.  What I suspect it mainly is is that no one keeps them and breeds them, so no one gets them in the future, so none are available.  There are a lot of people who keep and breed parrots, pheasants, and waterfowl.  Woodpeckers are only available as the odd bird from a rehabber.  I don't know if I've heard of anyone establishing a breeding group anywhere.

Which is a pity - few of our native birds are as impressive as a pileated woodpecker - I know my heart skips a beat whenever I see one swoop by.  They demonstrate some of the coolest adaptations of any birds, with their reinforced skulls, chisel beaks, and crazy tongues.  They could easily be the stars of their own aviaries, maybe housed with a few species that they wouldn't bother.

Not that pileated woodpeckers are in trouble and in need of captive breeding at this point.  They are doing fine in the wild.  Most of their kin are too (especially ironic, considering that the biggest conservation mystery in the US is the fate of its elusive, possibly extinct, bigger brother, the ivory-billed woodpecker).  So maybe the trick isn't to exhibit woodpeckers, but to set up zoo environments that attract wild woodpeckers to where guests can observe and admire them.  And we'll just hope that they leave all of the wooden structures alone.