Join BirdNote tomorrow, November 30th!
Illustrator David Sibley and actor H. Jon Benjamin will face off in the bird illustration battle of the century during BirdNote's Year-end Celebration and Auction!
What Do Woodpeckers Do on Smoky Days?
Just like us, birds stay home when the air quality is bad.
© Mick Thompson
When the air is thick with wildfire smoke, people are advised to stay home. At Hastings Natural History Preserve in California, Acorn Woodpeckers do the same. These gregarious birds live in family groups and frequently visit their neighbors while foraging. Using tiny radio transmitters, scientists tracked the movements of Acorn Woodpeckers during the summer of 2020 when wildfire smoke blanketed the preserve. On smoky days, woodpeckers spent more of their time at home. And when they did leave their territories, they didn’t venture far and visited fewer neighbors than usual. Published in Current Biology in 2023, the findings suggest that harm caused by wildfires go far beyond the blaze itself. As megafires become more common in our changing climate, even more birds could be affected by wildfire smoke in the future.
BirdNote®
What Do Woodpeckers Do on Smoky Days?
Written by Rebecca Heisman
This is BirdNote.
When the air is thick with wildfire smoke, people are advised to stay home. But birds don’t get a weather forecast, so what do they do?
[Acorn Woodpecker]
Acorn Woodpeckers are extremely social. They live in family groups that cooperate to raise young and to cache food in a communal granary. They often visit their neighbors too, which can help young birds find mates or establish new territories.
To study these social networks, scientists have been using tiny radio transmitters to track the movements of Acorn Woodpeckers in a nature preserve near Monterey, California. In the summer of 2020, when nearby wildfires blanketed the area in heavy smoke, the birds responded to poor air quality much like people do.
On smoky days, woodpeckers spent more of their time at home. And when they did leave their territories, they didn’t venture far and visited fewer neighbors than usual.
[Acorn Woodpecker]
The researchers calculated that from 2016 to 2020, almost 90% of the U.S. range of Acorn Woodpeckers experienced similarly smoky conditions at some point each year. That’s a lot of birds whose lives and community ties are being disrupted by wildfire smoke.
Learn more about what you can do to help ensure that we all have clean air to breathe when you visit our website, BirdNote.org. I’m Ariana Remmel.
[Acorn Woodpecker]
###
Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Acorn Woodpecker ML45158 recorded by Acorn Woodpecker, ML45158; Acorn Woodpecker ML56900 recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller; Acorn Woodpecker ML32270631 recorded by Jay McGowan.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2025 BirdNote December 2025
Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID# ACWO-04-2025-12-08 ACWO-04
Reference:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01184-3
Rebecca Heisman
Writer
Ariana Remmel
NarratorSights & Sounds
Related Field Notes
Male Marsh Wrens will build several--as many fifteen--dome shaped shells in the reeds to woo fema
The Osprey is the only North American raptor to eat fish almost exclusively, and it's well adapte