How to Attract Woodpeckers: Suet, Dead Wood, and Patience

Woodpeckers add drama to any feeding station — bold patterns, loud calls, and acrobatic clinging. The number-one way to attract them is suet, but a few habitat choices make your yard irresistible.

Put out suet

A suet cake in a simple wire cage feeder is the gold standard. Most woodpeckers — Downy, Hairy, Red-bellied, and others — readily come to suet, especially in cold weather when they need fat. In summer, use 'no-melt' rendered suet that won't go rancid in the heat.

Mount feeders against a trunk

Woodpeckers are used to bracing against vertical surfaces with their stiff tails. Suet feeders with a tail prop, or feeders mounted on or near a tree trunk, feel natural to them and bring quicker results than feeders hanging in the open.

Offer nuts and sunflower too

• Peanuts (in the shell or in a peanut feeder) and sunflower seeds are popular with Red-bellied and other woodpeckers.
• Mealworms appeal to some species, especially when feeding young.
• Fruit and jelly can attract sapsuckers and others in season.

Keep dead wood if it's safe

Woodpeckers excavate insects and nest cavities in dead and dying trees ('snags'). If a dead tree or large dead limb isn't a hazard, leaving it standing is the best habitat gift you can give woodpeckers — it's a natural feeder and nest site rolled into one.

Be patient with the big ones

Small woodpeckers come quickly; the spectacular Pileated may take time and prefers larger, wooded properties. Offer a large suet log, keep mature trees, and you may eventually host one. Log each species in Birder AI as your woodpecker list grows.