American Three-toed Woodpecker
(Picoides dorsalis)

Overview

Summary

© Jukka Jantunen
For additional photos and vocalizations, visit Dendroica. (Link opens in a new window.)

The American Three-toed Woodpecker is a little-known species that occupies coniferous forest across Canada. Although there are no reliable monitoring data for this species in Canada, results from the Breeding Bird Survey and the Christmas Bird Count combined suggest that the species may have shown a moderate increase since about 1970. Changes in the habitat of the American Three-toed Woodpecker are of concern (Leonard 2001). This species has been identified as a priority for conservation and/or stewardship in one or more Bird Conservation Region Strategies in Canada.

Designations

Population status

Population estimate

Distribution maps

• Birds of North America Online
• Breeding Bird Survey (BBS): Relative Abundance and Breeding Distribution (1993-2012)

Migration strategy, occurrence

Responsibility for conservation of world population

Conservation and management

Despite the apparent increase in the population in Canada, trends in the American Three-toed Woodpecker should be closely followed because of warnings that habitat degradation has caused population declines in some areas of North America (Leonard 2001) and because the available population data provide poor coverage of the northern portion of this species' range. Habitat modifications such as timber harvesting, fragmentation, rapid cutting rotations, fire suppression and salvage logging have all been shown to have negative influences on the species (Leonard 2001).

Bird conservation region strategies

Environment and Climate Change Canada and partners have developed Bird Conservation Region Strategies in each of Canada’s Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs). In these strategies, selected species are identified as priorities for one or more of the following reasons:

• conservation concerns (i.e., species vulnerable due to population size, distribution, population trend, abundance, or threats)
• stewardship responsibilities (i.e., species that typify the regional avifauna or have a large proportion of their range or population in the sub-region)
• management concerns (i.e., species that require ongoing management because of their socio-economic importance as game species, or because of their impacts on other species or habitats)
• other concerns (i.e., species deemed a priority by regional experts for other reasons than those listed above or because they are listed as species at risk or concern at the provincial level)

Select any of the sub-regions below to view the BCR strategy for additional details.

References

• Leonard, D.L Jr. 2001. American Three-toed Woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Leonard, D.L Jr. 2001. American Three-toed Woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. (Link)