Woodpecker
In applying for work as a pileated woodpecker,
you’ll have a biker boy crest of crimson
and you’ll possess experience as a showstopper,
with contrasting stripes on face and neck. You’ll know
how to drill a leafless tree, smashing a sharp beak
into bark over and over, long tongue wrapped
around your brain to cushion the blows, a tongue
no bigger than a string around a package. You’ll offer
sessions in jackhammering without injury to yourself
or others. You’ll be a role model, bracing your tailfeathers
for greater safety on the site. You’ll make a racket
across the forest as you search for food,
in logs, in fallen trees, eating hundreds of carpenter ants
at a time. You’ll have the ability to drum for a mate.
You’ll always understand your responsibilities
and be an expert in multi-tasking, caring for your brood
until the fledglings fly on their own. You’ll be capable
of defending territory fiercely. When you take to the air,
you’ll show off the flashes of your underwings
(white, black, white, black), a coded signal—
as you traverse a wintry ridge in April, hungry
for anything stirring—that you are a leader in the field.
– Anne Simpson
Woodpecker (Picadae)
Even if you’ve never seen one in the wild, chances are, you can imagine how this bird gets its name. Fittingly, a group of woodpeckers is known as a drumming (or descent), a reference to their most famous trait!
Diet and Unique Anatomy
These easy-to-recognize creatures are famous for just that: pecking wood. Don’t be fooled, though; they do not actually eat the wood. They are searching for insects and grubs that burrow inside trees. The woodpeckers drill holes into the trunk with their beaks until they find the hollowed-out tunnels inside. Woodpeckers have very long tongues, sometimes with a barbed tip, and sticky saliva. They use their tongues to probe the holes in the tree in search of prey, capturing them at rapid speeds, similar to a frog catching flies. Many woodpecker species have tongues as long as their bodies! When not darting out to snag prey, the tongue retracts internally to wrap around the bird’s skull, a unique anatomical feature of this bird type. This evolutionary adaption helps protect their brains from the impact of pecking. This sneaky bird is also occasionally known to use its long skinny tongue to steal nectar from hummingbird (another long-tongued bird) feeders.
Species in Nova Scotia
Woodpeckers are part of the family Picadae, which also includes sapsuckers and toucans. Woodpeckers are divided into over two hundred species; there are up to ten species of woodpecker in Nova Scotia. The largest woodpecker species in Nova Scotia is the pileated woodpecker. The most common are the downy woodpecker and the hairy woodpecker. Comparing these two species, hairy woodpeckers are larger (about 24 centimetres) than downy woodpeckers (about 15 centimetres), but they are shyer and less commonly seen. The hairy woodpecker’s distinctive “peek” call, however, will alert you to watch out when they are nearby: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Hairy_Woodpecker/sounds.
Anatomy and Appearance
Predominantly black with contrasting white feathers, woodpeckers have distinctive red or yellow head colouring, but you will often hear them pecking before you see them. The hollow sounding noise echoes through the woods and adds to the vibrant sounds of the outdoors. They are agile birds suited to their habitat, with two of their four toes facing backwards, an arrangement called zygodactyl. This foot structure gives them a versatile grip while flitting up, down, and around trees. Their tail feathers also act as a sort of rudder, providing them the stability they need while pecking. Yet another fascinating feature of woodpeckers is their ability to withstand the force of physically banging their beaks and heads on a tree, over and over, up to twenty times per second, or 12 000 times in a day! A woodpecker’s head has many adaptations to allow it to do this while avoiding the brain damage that would otherwise result from the force of impact. For example, a human brain becomes concussed with a force of approximately 90 Gs (wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force), equivalent to hitting an object at about nine metres per second. Woodpeckers withstand up to 1200 Gs when pecking, the equivalent of hitting an object a little over 11 600 metres per second! In addition to their tongues wrapped around their brains, woodpeckers have thick skulls and spongy bones to absorb the impact, and modified joints and muscles, which help spread the impact throughout their bodies. Although these adaptations specifically evolved to protect their brains during pecking impacts, unfortunately woodpeckers are as susceptible to window impacts as are other birds.
Biomimicry (Role in Human Research)
Woodpeckers spend a lot of time knocking bits of wood off trees with their beaks. They do this over and over again, as much as twenty two times per second. They experience an impact force up to one thousand times that of gravity. Woodpecker beaks and skulls have evolved so that they do not suffer any head injury or brain damage. Researchers study woodpecker anatomy and physiology to better understand how their skulls absorb impact. Based on this understanding, they hope to design better helmets for many different sports, including hockey, football, and cycling. They also hope to mimic this technology for other applications where vibrations and impacts are a problem, such as protecting microelectronics and improving vehicle crash safety. Hopefully, this fascinating bird will help future work that aims to reduce concussions in humans and improve rehabilitation of head injuries (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20088-woodpeckers-head-inspires-shock-absorbers/).
Jokes
What kind of joke does a woodpecker tell?
Knock-knock!
What does a woodpecker eat for breakfast?
Oakmeal!
– Sarah Silver Slayer
