Soft tapping may be a type of communication between mates, or between parents and offspring.Ĭourtship and nesting habits are essentially alike in all woodpeckers. Drumming designates territory and can attract a mate.
They occasionally utilize drainpipes, garbage can lids or tin roofs for drumming.
Most woodpeckers “drum” on resonant limbs and hollow tree trunks. Even in winter they have no trouble locating insects. Hollow sounds that echo from the woodpecker’s tapping probably signal the location of a wood borer’s channel and the bird can drill up to 100 strokes per minute to uncover the morsel. They also consume sap, nuts, and the fruits of some trees and shrubs. Woodpeckers feed mainly on wood-boring grubs, insects, insect eggs and pupae found in dead and live trees. Then more wing beats, another pause, and so on. During this short pause, the bird loses a few feet of altitude. The bird usually launches off the side of a tree, pumps its wings four or five strokes, and folds them against its body. During molt, the two middle tail feathers (the strongest ones) do not fall out until the other 10 have been replaced and can support the bird’s weight.Ī woodpecker’s flight is undulating. Stiff, pointed tail feathers catch on the rough bark to brace the hammering body. These zygodactyl feet are excellent for clinging to and climbing trunks of trees. On most species, first and fourth toes are paired facing backward and second and third toes face forward. To grip trees, a woodpecker has short, muscular legs and sharply clawed feet. The tongue is nearly twice as long as its owner’s head and winds around the inside back of the skull when retracted. After chopping exposes a woodborer’s cavity, the long, flexible tongue probes the crevice and grasps whatever insect or grub happens to be inside. The tongue of most woodpecker species is elongated, covered in sticky saliva and rich in tactile cells. Eyes are also protected from flying debris by a thickened nictitating membrane which closes with each strike. Spongy, shock-absorbing tissues connect these flexible joints strong neck muscles provide force for drilling and bristly feathers shield the nostrils from dust and wood chips. Bones between the beak and the unusually thick skull are not as rigidly joined as they are in other birds. In pecking out wood, the bird aims blows from alternating directions, much like a woodchopper does.
A number of body adaptations make this drilling possible.Ī woodpecker has a sharp, stout bill with a chisel-like tip for chipping and digging into tree trunks and branches. Woodpeckers drill into trees to uncover insect food, to create nesting shelters and to communicate with other woodpeckers. The woodpecker family, Picidae, fills a unique niche in the food-gathering chain. (Colaptes auratus) and pileated woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus), yellow-bellied sapsucker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), red-bellied woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) of northern boreal forests, is an occasional visitor in winter. Seven breeding species occur in Pennsylvania and one, the black-backed woodpecker Woodpeckers have been around for a long time: their fossil remains date back 25 million years to the Oligocene epoch, and they’re widely distributed, with 22 species in the U.S. Excludes: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bhutan, China, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Laos, Vietnam, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, Western Samoa, Greenland, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Argentina, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Haiti, Netherlands Antilles, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Virgin Islands (U.S.Printable Woodpeckers Wildlife Note (PDF)Ī drumroll at dawn, a bird in undulating flight through the forest, woodchips littering the ground at the base of a tree-all of these signal the presence of a woodpecker, a highly specialized and important member of nature’s complex world.