Size: 16 ½ inches long, crow-sized, Minnesota's largest woodpecker. Range: Found in eastern half of U.S., Pacific Northwest. Habits and habitat: A woodland bird, sometimes found at suet feeders.

I’d like to shine a light on three of our less commonly encountered woodpeckers, each one with its own surprises: the sapsucker, the flicker and the mighty pileated woodpecker.

The flicker is the only woodpecker that spends much time on the ground. Flickers use a woodpecker adaptation, the bill, as a probe to find morsels of food underground, such as worms and grubs.

Few birds have more common names than the northern flicker. This flashy woodpecker goes by cotton-rump, high-hole, yellowhammer and at least 150 other colloquialisms. All these monikers speak to ...

He’s actually a pileated woodpecker (PW), the largest and easiest to identify of the whole woodpecker clan. Seventeen to 19 inches tall — crow sized — PW’s are spectacular to say the least. With a ...