 Unlike most woodpeckers, the Hispaniolan woodpecker is a social species that takes advantage of having a large number of individual adult birds in the colony to protect a nesting bank or tree.There may be twenty pairs of birds in a colony, with several nesting in the same tree.The nests are excavated in trunks and branches, and discarded holes are reused by Hispaniolan amazons, Hispaniolan parakeets, Hispaniolan trogons, Antillean piculets, and the golden swallow.