In urban areas their nests are often taken over by starlings after they have finished building them. They excavate a new nest hole each time they renest during the season. They prefer forests, swamps or wooded suburban habitats. Humans feel that dead trees are dangerous and remove them. This reduces the number of places that woodpeckers, and all the other wildlife that count on them for homes, can live.
Woodpeckers sometimes use telephone poles in the place of dead trees.
Occasionally they will try to excavate a nest through the wooden siding of someone s home, or use the metal siding to increase the noise of their tapping to attract a mate. It takes only 7 to 10 days for a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers to carve a home in a dead tree. Red-bellied woodpeckers will occasionally use bird houses. Red-bellied woodpeckers have been known to store food in hollow trees. You can attract red-bellied woodpeckers to bird feeders by providing them with peanuts.