Holes in trees, ant heaps, etc.

Woodpeckers excavate holes for their nests. The entrance hole is round and often high up on a trunk. Woodpeckers make a new nest hole every year; the old one is used by many other creatures, including small mammals.

Woodpeckers are equipped with two hind and two foretoes, allowing them to maintain a firm grip on the bark of trunks and branches, and they can then move up and down looking for insects, larvae, and pupae. You find these holes especially in weakened, old, or dead trees, where the bark is falling off—so-called woodpecker trees. You can also see traces of the chisel-shaped beaks of woodpeckers, and at the foot of the tree there are often large piles of wood shavings.

When a Black Woodpecker excavates its way into the nest of black wood ants or black Ross ants, the resulting holes may be large. Black, White-backed, and Green Woodpeckers assiduously search in old tree trunks for insects. They can transform a stump into a pile of wood shavings in no time at all.

A Black Woodpecker feeding young. LG.

Characteristic peck marks of a Three-toed Woodpecker on a pine. AK.

A male Three-toed Woodpecker. THLU.

Woodpeckers can also excavate holes in the gables of wooden houses, or in nest boxes (here a Swift box), so they can get at the eggs or young of small birds. L-HO.

Small holes in trees are created by a variety of insects with larvae living in the dead trunks beneath the bark: wood wasps, bark beetles, and fiery clearwings.
Inset: Hind part of the body of a cardinal beetle. AK.

Shavings on the ground are the result of a woodpecker’s work on a tree trunk. AK.

Large holes in ant nests are often the result of Green or Black Woodpeckers hunting for ants. The holes are visible only when the ants aren’t active outside the nest. L-HO.

Wood ants, Ross ants, and termites make nests in trees; they can eat through trunks to such an extent that the trunks end up looking like dried-out sponges.

Some titmice excavate holes for their nests in dead tree trunks, stumps, or weak live trees, but the holes are not as high up as those excavated by woodpeckers.

Brown Bears love wood ants; they can break off the top of an ants’ nest and then root through it. UR.