The red-headed woodpecker is found year round in the southeast of the continent in the Coastal Plains region as far north as New York including all the lower states through the mid-Texas coast. Too, these woodpeckers can be found in all of the Appalachian Mountain region from lower New York and below. Further, this woodpecker can be found from the Appalachian Mountain region westward into the Interior Lowlands region in the area below the great lakes, to eastern Iowa and southward through eastern Kansas, most of Oklahoma, the eastern part of the north Texas panhandle and south into the Great Plains region of Texas.

Once numerous, but now much scarcer over their range, especially during summer, because of competition from starlings for nest holes and have become very rare in the northeast.

During the summer season, the red-headed woodpecker also can be found in the northern area of the Appalachian region up to lower Maine. Also, this woodpecker travels inland to the areas around the Great Lakes area of the Interior Lowlands, including the extreme lower part of the Canadian Shield around the Great Lakes. This woodpecker, during summer, will also travel as far as the Great Plains region in the US and small areas of Canada and as far south in the Great Plains region as New Mexico and all of the north Texas panhandle, including the steeps of the front range of the Rocky Mountain region.

Too, there is a relatively small location in the Un ita-Wasatch-Cache national forest east of Salt Lake City, Utah where some of the red-headed woodpecker go in the summer season, but I have yet to see any of them there.

Widespread in open woodlands, scattered trees and in suburbs. Feeds in trees, on the ground, and often fly-catches.

Red-headed woodpeckers are sexually monomorphic. This means that males and females look exactly the same. They have bright red heads, necks, throats and shoulders. Their wings and tail are bluish-black. These woodpeckers have white wing patches, white rumps and white underside.

Juveniles have a brown head, which becomes red over first winter, dark bars on wing patches.