Is Woodpecker Drumming More Than Noise?

Conceptual Note: This piece sits deliberately between observation and explanation: it outlines what is currently supported by evidence, then turns to the not knowing that remains — treating uncertainty not as a failure of understanding, but as a necessary part of how knowledge advances.

The forgotten song

Among birds, few behaviours are as immediately recognisable as the drumming of a woodpecker. Long before the bird itself is seen, the rapid, percussive burst carries across woodland and parkland alike – unmistakable, seasonal, and deeply familiar to anyone who spends time outdoors. And yet, despite its prominence, woodpecker drumming occupies a curious position in ornithology: widely acknowledged, routinely described, but far less often examined with the conceptual depth routinely afforded to avian song.

This imbalance is striking. Drumming is not a marginal behaviour. Across the woodpecker family (Picidae), it is widely used in territorial defence and mating contexts, and its structure can carry reliable species-level information. It is repeatable, individually consistent within individuals, and mechanically demanding. In functional terms, it fulfils many of the same roles as song in passerines – and yet it has never quite entered the same theoretical conversation.

That disparity raises a simple but revealing question: why has one of the most conspicuous non-vocal signals in birds remained comparatively under-synthesised from an evolutionary perspective?

What we know – and know well

The foundational understanding of woodpecker drumming is not in doubt. Comparative work has shown that drums differ systematically among taxa, and that these differences can be sufficient for discrimination among species in local communities. Drumming is not merely incidental noise produced during foraging or excavation; it is a deliberate signal deployed in predictable social contexts, particularly during the breeding season.

Audio cue — A stereotyped, evenly paced drum that serves as a useful reference point for how structured woodpecker drumming can be.

Field studies and playback experiments further support drumming’s role as an aggressive signal in territorial encounters and as part of the behavioural repertoire associated with reproduction. In many species, it appears to serve as a primary long-range signal in circumstances where song would play that role in other birds. At a descriptive level, the behaviour is well documented.

What is less clear is how this behaviour fits into broader frameworks of signal evolution.

An asymmetry worth noticing

Avian song has generated entire subdisciplines: bioacoustics, cultural evolution, neuroethology, and mature theory around sexual selection, performance trade-offs, and receiver perception. Songs are routinely treated as signals shaped by morphology, learning, ecology, and social context – and subtle variation is interrogated for information content.

Across continents, woodpeckers, like the White-bellied Woodpecker, converge on remarkably similar drumming behaviours, suggesting that this percussive signal is shaped less by geography than by shared constraints of morphology, performance, and communication. © Ayuwat YearwattanakanokS

Woodpecker drumming, by contrast, is often treated as functionally “solved” once its territorial and reproductive contexts are established. The behaviour is recognised, categorised, and then – conceptually – set aside.

Not all woodpeckers rely on drumming to the same extent; in some species, such as the Eurasian Green Woodpecker, vocal communication plays the dominant role, highlighting that signalling systems evolve along multiple, overlapping pathways rather than a single trajectory. © *Alexis Lours* *(CC BY 4.0, minimal exposure adjustment)*

Among other woodpecker species, the Levaillant’s Woodpecker occupies an intermediate signalling space, where drumming remains part of the repertoire without dominating communication, illustrating how different signal types can coexist rather than replace one another. © *Javier Elorriaga Navarro*

This difference is notable not because drumming has been ignored, but because it has rarely been integrated into the same theoretical machinery applied to other avian signals. It is frequently treated as a special case rather than as a parallel system.

Yet from an evolutionary standpoint, there is little reason to assume it should be treated differently.

Performance, constraint, and honesty

Drumming is mechanically demanding. Producing rapid, precisely timed strikes requires fine motor control, neuromuscular coordination, and repeated high-impact contact. These requirements impose constraints – and where constraints exist, honest signalling becomes a plausible evolutionary route.

In Pileated Woodpeckers, and similar-sized relatives, drumming shifts toward force and resonance, making physical scale and mechanical constraint impossible to separate from how the signal is produced — or perceived. © *Ryan Shean*

Recent work makes this general point explicit: woodpecker drums provide an opportunity to study how sexual selection elaborates signals under biomechanical constraint, and how neural substrates associated with communication displays may evolve in parallel with those linked to birdsong. At minimum, drumming indicates that performance-based selection is not limited to vocal communication signals.

Audio cue — Slower, heavier strikes produce a resonant signal that carries power rather than speed, making body size and mechanical constraint audible in the structure of the drum.

What remains less directly tested are the fitness consequences of fine-scale variation. Do receivers – rivals or potential mates – assess subtle differences in speed, length, or consistency? Are faster or longer drums reliably associated with competitive outcomes or reproductive success, or are they simply stylistic components within species-specific ‘templates’?

At present, these questions sit at the edge of the literature rather than at its centre.

Audio cue — A compact, high-tempo drum that makes constraint audible – this is drumming at the fast end of the woodpecker spectrum.

Where the conceptual gap lies

The limitation is not a lack of observations, but a lack of synthesis. Drumming is still rarely treated as a signalling system routinely subjected to the full range of evolutionary questions asked of song. As a result, several testable ideas remain comparatively underdeveloped.

At the small-bodied end of the spectrum, like Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers, drumming becomes a test of speed and precision rather than power, hinting at how communication signals are shaped by neuromuscular limits as much as by social function. © Steve Juhasz

For example:

Is woodpecker drumming an honest signal of motor performance or physical condition?
Do habitat acoustics influence the evolution of drumming structure in the same way they shape song?
Has divergence in drumming contributed to reproductive isolation among closely related lineages, and if so, under what ecological conditions?

Each of these questions is biologically plausible, grounded in existing evidence, and amenable to empirical testing. None require overturning current understanding – only extending it.

Why might this gap exist?

Several factors likely contribute. Percussive signals pose technical challenges: substrate choice, transmission properties, and context-dependent delivery can complicate analysis. Historically, avian communication research has also been shaped by taxonomic and conceptual bias, with passerine song dominating both the questions asked and the tools designed to answer them.

There is also a cultural element. Song fits neatly into human intuitions about communication and aesthetics. Drumming, despite its clarity, sits slightly outside that tradition – familiar, but less often elevated to the status of a classic model system.

None of these explanations imply neglect. Rather, they suggest path dependence: attention follows established routes unless actively redirected.

Why revisiting drumming still matters

Re-examining woodpecker drumming is not an exercise in novelty. It is an opportunity to test whether our theories of animal communication are as general as we assume – or whether they have been shaped, quietly but profoundly, by a focus on a single signal type.

Drumming pushes us beyond vocal learning, beyond song alone, and towards communication as a product of morphology, biomechanics, and environment combined. In doing so, it invites a broader view of how animals signal – and how we, as observers, decide which signals deserve deeper explanation.

Sometimes progress begins not with new data, but with the decision to ask familiar questions of familiar behaviours – and to notice when those questions have not yet been fully asked.

References

Garcia, M., Theunissen, F., Sèbe, F., Mathevon, N. et al. (2020). Evolution of communication signals and information during species radiation. Nature Communications, 11, 4970. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18772-3

Miles, M. C. & Fuxjager, M. J. (2018). Macroevolutionary patterning of woodpecker drums reveals how sexual selection elaborates signals under constraint. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 285, 20172628. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2628

Schuppe, E. R., Cantin, L., Chakraborty, M., Biegler, M. T., Jarvis, E. R., Chen, C.-C. et al. (2022). Forebrain nuclei linked to woodpecker territorial drum displays mirror those that enable vocal learning in songbirds. PLOS Biology, 20(9), e3001751. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001751

Schuppe, E. R. & colleagues (2021). Evolutionary and biomechanical basis of drumming behaviour in woodpeckers. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9, 649146. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.649146

Winkler, H. & Short, L. L. (1978). A comparative analysis of acoustical signals in pied woodpeckers (Aves, Picoides). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 160(1), 1–109. https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstreams/5aaaf5f3-10aa-47e3-a76e-1bbb407afea6/download

Update: An additional image has been added to illustrate variation in signalling strategies within the woodpecker family.