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| Woodpeckers often feed on insects that burrow inside trees. |
Woodpecker, the name of a large group of climbing birds, of which there are a number of different species.
6 Facts About Woodpeckers:
- They have long, straight, angular beaks, adapted to perforating the bark of trees.
- Their tongues are long, slender and armed with a barbed, horny tip.
- They can thrust their tongues far out of their mouths and so spear insects in the depths of their burrows.
- Their tongues are also covered with a sticky, slimy substance, that helps to hold their prey.
- When feeding, they usually ascend the tree spirally, aided by the spiny points which terminate their tail feathers.
- They tap here and there on the tree-trunk, searching for the holes in which insects are hidden, and often tear aprat large parts of rotten trees, for the larvae concealed in them.
5 More Types of Woodpeckers:
The sop slicker is a species that is fond of the sap of trees and bores round holes, which it arranges with geometrical exactness in broad bands around the trunk of a tree. It especially favors the pines, and in feeding it moves about over the checkerboard of holes, taking the sap from them regularly, as it accumulates.
The ivory-billed woodpecker of the southern United States is a large bird, about twenty-one inches long, bright black and white in color, the male having a large bright scarlet crest. Like most of the other woodpeckers, this one excavates its nest in suitable dead trees.
The red-headed woodpecker, the black and white woodpecker, the hairy woodpecker and the downy woodpecker are well known in the Northern states. The redheaded woodpecker often lights on the shingles of houses or on a hollow branch and strikes his bill in a noisy clatter, stopping now and then to call out his hoarse, rough note. The woodpeckers are found in almost every temperate part of the globe, except that none ever existed in Australia and Egypt.
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