Guess Who Came To Dinner One June Afternoon?

[Steve Kroenke]

Guess Who Came To Dinner One June Afternoon?

I like bats. No, not the kind that transforms into Count Dracula and seeks out the necks of unsuspecting victims. Just the little bats we see flying about at dusk and in the early mornings.

Next to the road in the front yard of my previous residence in Tallahassee, Florida is about a 60-foot tall wooden utility pole. There are two metal beams that protrude out around four feet and they are apparently partially hollow inside. Where the beam attaches to the pole, there is a small aperture on the underside. This hole is less than two inches in diameter. The upper beam is about six feet from the top of the pole. Both beams face the west and receive a maximum dose of hot sunshine during the summer. The pole is wrapped in thick black plastic for the upper 30 feet. My purple martin colony was located about 75 feet from the utility pole.

Well, the upper beam was used as a small bat colony for several years. These were small brown bats and they entered and exited the entrance hole located underneath the beam. I enjoyed watching them flying out in the evenings to begin their nocturnal hunt for insects and then returning in the mornings. During the summer of 2004 when I still lived in Tallahassee, there may have been as many as ten bats in the colony.

In the summer of 2002, the little bats faced an aerial predator that frequently hunted them. A Mississippi kite (predatory bird) would stalk the bats in the late afternoons just after they left to feed. The kite would fly over at about 100 feet off the ground and then make spectacular stoops on the erratically flying bats. The kite was no match for the bats? agility and never connected that I saw. Sometimes the kite would follow a bat all over my yard and make sporadic dives at the little creature. I?m sure the kite was eventually successful, though I never witnessed it.

However, during the summer of 2003 something more bizarre happened to the little bat colony in my front yard. It was terrifying. The little brown bats had to be VERY CAREFUL when something came KNOCKING at their door. This hunter did not chase the bats. He just pulled them out of the entrance hole. Now guess who came to dinner?

He is about nine inches long, has a scarlet red cap, zebra back color pattern, light breast with a faint reddish tint, white rump, a long pointed beak, and feet with two toes in the front and two in the back. You guessed it? Yes, it was a male red-bellied woodpecker and this one had a craving for fresh succulent bat meat! He was a butcher! I have known for sometime that both red-bellied and red-headed woodpeckers will eat other birds? eggs and young. These woodpeckers also like suet at bird feeders, so ?meat? is part of their diet. I have seen red-bellied woodpeckers destroy great crested flycatcher, bluebird and chickadee nests, including eating their eggs. But I had no idea that they would devour bats!

In June of 2003 I first noticed a male red-bellied woodpecker hanging on the entrance hole to the bat colony; this hole was too small for him to enter. It was difficult for him and the plastic wrapping around the pole was also a deterrent. I couldn?t figure out what he was doing. He would hang there for a few seconds, lose his grip and then fly up to the top of the utility pole. This top is about ten inches across. I would hear a clicking noise coming from the support beam and I assumed this was perhaps bats emitting some kind of alarm cry.

Well I found out what the red-bellied woodpecker was up to on the late afternoon of June 25, 2003. I saw him land on top of the utility pole. Then he dropped down and flew to the entrance hole to the bat colony. Apparently he timed his arrival perfectly. He started pulling on something and dragged out a squirming adult bat! For a second both killer and victim hovered underneath the support beam. The bat was firmly gripped in the woodpecker?s beak. Carrying his prize with him, he then flew up to the top of the utility pole and this became a bloody butchering platform. Pinning the bat to the pole with his sharp claws, the woodpecker then hammered his prey with violent stabs. He would raise his head high and then slam down like a sledgehammer. I could barely see the little bat?s wings flapping for a few seconds as the woodpecker viciously pecked. Then it was over. The woodpecker continued to peck and was apparently eating bits of flesh and the bat?s entrails. Over and over again the woodpecker jabbed the lifeless piece of limp skin and devoured the bat?s body. After around 20 minutes of feasting, the woodpecker finished and flew away. Now I know what that red-bellied woodpecker was doing at the bat colony! He was seeking fresh meat!

Throughout the summer of 2003, the male red-bellied woodpecker would occasionally visit the entrance hole to the bat colony. But the bats were finally ?wising up? and stayed put deep inside the metal support beam. I saw no more successful raids by any woodpecker on the bat colony.

If woodpeckers will eat other birds? eggs and young as well as suet at feeders, then this bat eating behavior may be more common. I would encourage anyone who has a bat colony in their yards to monitor it in the evenings and see if any red-bellied or red-headed woodpeckers are paying a deadly visit. Apparently bat flesh was a delicacy to at least one male red-bellied woodpecker!

Steve Kroenke

[John Atteberry]

I've never heard of that before and couldn't imagine a nice woodpecker doing that! I guess you learn something everyday! My question is, will they eat martin eggs and babies? Thanks for the interesting reading! John!

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey John,

The chances of a woodpecker eating a purple martin's eggs/young are probably remote. I have had red-bellied woodpeckers roost in both Supergourds and naturals prior to the martins returning. But I never saw the red-bellies try to enter the martins' nests later in the season. At my new colony in Louisiana, I did see a red-headed woodpecker landing on the ground underneath my martin housing and picking up discarded martin egg shells. This woodpecker also took dragonflies off the ground that the martins had dropped while trying to feed their young in the gourds. Mockingbirds will do this, too.

Steve