Types of woodpeckers. Spotted woodpecker What group of animals does the woodpecker belong to?

Species composition of woodpeckers

Based on literary sources, it has been established that seven species of woodpeckers inhabit the territory of the Trans-Baikal Territory.

1. Black woodpecker, or bile (Dryocopus martius L.)

2. Three-toed woodpecker (Pucoides tridactylus L.)

3. Lesser spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos minor L.)

4. Vertineck (Jynx torquilla L.)

5. White-backed woodpecker (Dendrocopos leucotos)

6. Grey-haired woodpecker (Picus canus)

7. Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major L.)

One species is migratory - the little wryneck, the rest are found all year round. The most numerous is the great spotted woodpecker, found throughout the region. Zhelna, three-toed woodpecker and gray-haired woodpecker are common species, but their numbers are small. The white-backed woodpecker breeds in the southeastern regions, preferring mixed forests dominated by larch. The wryneck and the lesser spotted woodpecker are also quite numerous, especially in the floodplain forests.

Black woodpecker, or bile (Dryocopus martius L.)

Zhelna is one of the largest woodpeckers. The size of a crow. The color is matte black, the eye is white. The top of the head of the male and the back of the head of the female are crimson red.

The flight is uneven, "loose", with uneven wing beats. Juveniles are similar to adults, but the plumage is without shine, brownish, there are dark marks on the red cap, the beak at the end is not chisel-shaped, as in adults, but pointed. Weight 250-450 g, length 42-49, wing 22, 8-26, 0, wingspan 64-80 cm.

The black woodpecker inhabits the entire north of Eurasia - forest, forest-steppe and partly steppe zones.

Black woodpecker. Photo: Tomi Tapio K

In the Moscow region, zhelna settles in tall complex spruce forests, in white moss forests, blueberry forests and lingonberries. In the western suburbs, it is not uncommon in forests of water protection significance and, for example, in the taiga-type forest area along the river. Moscow on an area of ​​​​4000 hectares in 1956 lived 5 pairs of these birds. Over the years, its number changes and in 1921-1926. only 2 couples lived in the same area.

According to Izmailov I.V. (1967), the number of birds in the forests of the Vitim Plateau is 0.8 ind / km 2 - in river urems, in other stations - mountain woodlands, pine forests, larch-birch groves and pegs - this is a rare bird, the number of which does not exceed 0.3-0.4. In the Leno-Aleginsky interfluve, according to Larionov G.P. et al. (1991), the population density of the zhelny was 0.4 ind. / km 2, in pine forests - 0.6. In the conditions of the Trans-Baikal Territory, the zhelna is found in the zone of taiga, mixed and pine forests, but everywhere it is small in number: in pine forests - 0.5 ind. / km 2, mountain dark coniferous taiga - 0.4, adventitious mixed forests - 0.2 (Izmailov I V., Borovitskaya G.K., 1973).

Black woodpeckers are inhabitants of old tall coniferous and mixed forests, both in the continuous taiga and in isolated areas of the forest, up to steppe forests. They like to settle near recent fires or other areas of the forest with diseased and dead trees.

The reproductive cycle begins already in March, when loud drum trills of the zhelna become audible, reaching a special strength in early April. From time to time, voiced cries of “kru-kru-kru ... truyuyuu ... truu ... truuu” emitted by birds in flight, or a drawn-out “kneeeeyy” and “kiaai” - from the trees can also be heard.

In early April, the yellows begin to make preparations for building a nest. For a hollow choose tall trees without branches. Most often it is aspen, less often - pine, spruce, etc. From the ground to the hollow is at least 4-5 m, usually more than 10. Both members of the pair gouge the hollow, but more male. The letok often has a rectangular shape, on average 8.5 x 12 cm in size, the depth of the hollow is 35-55, the diameter is 15-20 cm. In the clutch there are 3-6, more often 4-5 white eggs, their dimensions are 30-39 x 22-28 mm. The male and female incubate alternately, then they feed the chicks together. At the nest, they are careful and silent. The male is more diligent in nest care. The duration of incubation is 12-14 days.

Newly hatched chicks are very unattractive. Only the upper part of their body is covered with very sparse black-gray down, their head is very large, and their beak is disproportionately thick. They remain in the nest until they learn how to fly properly; they climb the walls of the hollow and often look out of it, poking their heads into the hole. The female spends the night with the chicks, and the male spends the night in a hollow hollowed out by him in the previous year.

The chicks leave the nest at the age of 24-28 days. For several days before departure, they constantly scream, leaning out of the hollow.

Black woodpeckers feed mainly on insects that damage the bark and wood, their larvae and pupae - barbels, bark beetles, sapwood, borers, horntails. Recently dead trees are sanded, wood is hollowed out. In snowless time, and often in winter, they dig in anthills, eating both adult ants and their offspring. Occasionally they eat chicks from other hollow nesters, drink vegetable juices.

At the end of summer and autumn, young ones settle, often migrating tens of hundreds of kilometers from their native hollow. Adult birds live settled or also roam. The maximum known age of the zhelna is 7 years.

Three-toed woodpecker (Pucoides tridactylus L.)

A medium sized bird (larger than a starling). The top of the neck, back, wings, tail and spots on the sides are black. The underside of the body, spots on the back, wings, tail and stripes on the sides of the head are white. The cap of the male is lemon-yellow, with black and white thin strokes, the cap of the female is “gray-haired”, with black and white longitudinal streaks. There are 3 fingers on the foot, since the 1st finger is reduced.

Juveniles (both males and females) with a yellow cap, all black areas of plumage with a brown tint, white areas on the head are smaller than in adults, brown bloom on the sides and abdomen. Weight 50-90 g., length 21-24, wing 11, 8-13, 2, wingspan 33-37 cm.

Three-toed woodpecker. Photo: Armandas Naudzius

Three-toed woodpeckers are found in all types of forests, prefer deaf massifs of mountain dark coniferous taiga, in particular fir and larch forests. They prefer shady, damp, sometimes swampy areas, they also gravitate towards burnt areas, where there is a lot of dry forest, old clearings with stumps and deadwood.

According to I. V. Izmailov, G. K. Borovitskaya (1973), in the adventitious mixed forests of southwestern Transbaikalia, the number of three-toed woodpeckers is extremely low - 0.03 ind./km 2. In the northern regions, it slightly increases. So, according to the accounting data of I. V. Izmailov (1967), in pine forests and larch-birch groves of the south of the Vitim plateau, the population density was 0.2 ind. / km 2, in larch taiga - 0.3, in river urems of the Muya valley 0.6. In larch forests in southern Yakutia in July 1986, the average number was 0.2 ind./km 2, in mixed forests - 0.4 (Larionov et al., 1991).

The three-toed woodpecker starts breeding early. At mating time, they also make more drawn-out sounds and trills like chirring.

Drumming begins even in full winter. They hollow out hollows in dry decaying larches or in other trees, at different heights, usually low (rarely above 6 m), sometimes in stumps. The diameter of the hollow is 8-14 cm, the depth is 20-35 cm, the notch is 4-5 cm in diameter. Old hollows of their own species and motley woodpeckers also inhabit. In laying 3-7, more often 4-5 white eggs 21-28 x 17-21 mm in size. Both members of the pair incubate for 11-14 days, starting from the laying of the last egg, both feed the chicks. The nest is restless. Young, barely grown up, become noisy. They leave the hollow at the age of 22-25 days and enjoy the care of adults for about a month.

The main food of three-toed woodpeckers throughout the year are insects, mainly xylophagous insects (barbels, bark beetles). In addition to larvae and adults of barbels and bark beetles, they also feed on larvae of horntails, leafworms, scoops, cocoons of riders, dark beetles, weevils, and sawflies. Along with insects, birds eat larch, pine, cedar, and birch seeds in winter. The three-toed woodpecker feeds mainly on trees, preferring larch, stumps and on the ground. The search for food is concentrated in the lower part of the trunks, occasionally carried out on the branches. Food is obtained by chiselling.

Birds live settled in winter. Juveniles move widely in autumn and early winter. Some old birds also roam, but rarely go beyond the nesting range.

Lesser spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos minor L.)

This is a rare, sometimes common, sedentary species. Listed in the Red Book of Buryatia. The size of a sparrow. The length of the small spotted woodpecker is only 16 cm, the wingspan is 30, the length of the wing is 7, the tail is 6 cm. The top of the neck and front of the back, wings and tail are black. The forehead, cheeks, back, transverse stripes on the wings and on the side feathers of the tail and the entire underside of the body are white. The cap of the male is red, the cap of the female is white, ocher- or brownish-white.

Young birds are colored like adults, but black elements with a brown tint, more dark strokes on the back. The male can already be distinguished by the red cap, but it (like that of the young female) is small and with dark “blots”.

Small spotted woodpecker. Photo: Wojsyl

The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker prefers deciduous and mixed forests in the floodplains of small and large rivers. Usually found in riverine thickets of willows, large willows, bird cherry. During non-breeding time it flies into suburban forests, parks, gardens.

According to Izmailov I.V., Borovitskaya G.K. in 1973, in the adventitious mixed forests of southwestern Transbaikalia, the abundance of the species does not exceed 0.06 ind./km 2.

This bird is one of the most frisky and agile birds of its group. With great dexterity, she jumps up the trunks of trees, runs around, always climbs with her head up, occasionally moving backwards.

The lesser spotted woodpecker is more common on lateral branches and thin branches of trees than on trunks. It is more mobile and does not linger on the same tree for more than a minute when searching for food.

After winter migrations, woodpeckers appear in nesting places in mid-late March. At this time, you can hear his "drum roll" and regular cries, the peak of which falls on the end of March - the beginning of April. The drum roll of the small woodpecker is crackling, silent, sounds often, every 3-5 seconds.

Birds nest in hollows, which are hollowed out in rotten wood - both in trunks and in large branches, at very different heights, from the ground itself (often in stumps) to a height of 10-12 m. The diameter of the notch is 32-38 mm, hollow depth - 10-20 cm, diameter - 10-12 cm. They settle only in freshly hollowed out hollows. They start nesting early, in the steppe regions - as early as April-May, in the far north of the range - in late May - early June. In laying 3-8 white eggs, more often - 5-6. Their dimensions are 17-22 x 13-16 mm. The male and female incubate the clutch and feed the chicks. The male sits at night. The duration of incubation is 14 days. Chicks in the hollow are constantly screaming. Adults, when a person is found at the nest, immediately raise a cry, but usually soon calm down and tolerate an observer not far from the nest. Young fly out at the age of 3 weeks. The broods disintegrate very soon and the chicks move on to an independent life.

The basis of the nutrition of the small woodpecker, regardless of the time of year, is insects. The results of studying the diet of its diet by scientists in southern Yakutia show that in summer the birds feed on barbel larvae, ants, caterpillars of lepidoptera, diptera, ants, sawflies, barbels and borers, ant adults, bark beetles and leaf beetles. In other regions of the south of Eastern Siberia, barbels, bark beetles, sawflies, and butterfly caterpillars are also food objects. In the winter feeding of woodpeckers in the cedar forests of the Komarsky Range, scientists have discovered pine nuts.

The main methods of obtaining food are chiselling, pecking, and occasionally catching on the fly.

At the end of summer, young birds actively move, and adult birds also begin migrations in autumn. Lesser woodpeckers spend winter wandering, more or less shifting to the south. In the north of the range, these migrations have the character of real migrations. In winter, they are often found in the steppes to the south of the nesting range.

Vertineck (Jynx torquilla L.)

A bird the size of a sparrow. Outwardly, it looks more like a passerine bird with a long movable neck than woodpeckers, retains an outward resemblance to them only in the structure of the legs (the 1st and 4th fingers are directed backwards) and in the nature of the flight - it is wavy, consists of alternating quick strokes and flight by inertia with folded wings.

Vertineck above is ash-gray with dark wavy spots and speckles; the lower part of it is white and sparsely covered with dark triangular spots, the throat and lower part of the neck in transverse wavy stripes on a yellow background, a blackish longitudinal strip stretches from the top of the head to the lower back. The rest of the pattern of the upper body consists of blackish, rusty and light brown spots. The eyes are yellow-brown, the beak and legs are greenish-yellow. In young, the color is paler, the pattern is coarser and the eyes are gray-brown. Length reaches 17-20 cm, wingspan 25-30, wing length 8.0-9.7, tail 6.5 cm, weight 32-48 g.

Wryneck. Photo: Arnstein Ronning

The spring song of the male is the monotonous nasal calls “kii-kii-kii ...” or “knuyu-knuyu-knuyu ...” that follow one after another. They actively sing only in pre-nesting time. A bird caught in a hollow hisses. With anxiety - soft "tek-tek-tek ...", "pizz", "pizz-pizz-pizz ...".

Vertisheeks live in light forests - mixed and deciduous forests of different ages, while they prefer island forests, edges, clearings, clearings, where small groups of trees, young growth and shrubs, rotten stumps are found. They avoid solid forests, mountainous dark coniferous taiga, and mountain woodlands.

According to Izmailov I.V., Borovitskaya G.K. (1973) in pine, adventitious mixed forests, pine and elm forest-steppe of southwestern Transbaikalia, the number of wryneck was 0.1-0.3 ind./km 2 . And in the Vitim Plateau, the wryneck is common - it reaches its highest density in larch-birch groves and groves of the forest-steppe (4.0 ind./km 2), it is somewhat less common in sparse larch forests (1.5-1.8); rare (0, 1) in overgrown clearings and to the north on the Stanovoy Upland (Izmailov I.V., 1967).

Vertineck is a lazy bird, moving only when necessary. Its legs are used for clinging, but apparently not at all suitable for climbing. On the ground, she jumps with heavy jumps and, having flown, soon again goes to some tree. From a height, it flies headlong, almost close to the ground itself, flies here with quick flaps of wings for a certain distance in a straight line and again rises upward in a large regular arc. Sitting on a tree, the bird constantly turns its head, then to the left, then to the right, for which it got its name.

Everything unusual irritates the little girl. It stretches its neck, puffs up its head feathers and spreads its tail like a fan, all accompanied by slow repeated nods, or it stretches its whole body, leans forward, especially when angry, closes its eyes and moves its throat like a tree frog, emitting a strange muffled coo.

Vertineck - migrant. They arrive late, to the steppe regions - about the middle - the end of April, to the north of the range - at the end of May.

Males begin to sing a few days after arrival, having found a suitable hollow. They nest in woodpecker hollows and natural hollows of tree trunks and thick branches, willingly settle in nest boxes and birdhouses. They can occupy voids in buildings, found nests even in burrows in steep banks and slopes of steppe gullies.

The little neck in the hollow of a woodpecker does not make any nest, in hollows with a flat bottom it lays several blades of grass in a ring around the middle of the bottom, in titmouses with a quadrangular bottom it makes a flooring that completely covers the bottom. Settling in someone else's nest, the wryneck does not make a new one, but lays its eggs directly on the dead chicks of the previous owners of the nest.

The clutch is large, from 5 to 14, more often 7-10 white eggs and quite varied in shape, from elongated-ovoid or oblong-elliptical to almost round. The size of the eggs is 16-23 x 13-17 mm. They incubate, starting from the laying of the last egg, 12-14 days. The female sits mainly, the male replaces her for a short time. The bird sits tightly on the nest, flies reluctantly. The chicks sit in the hollow for 23-27 days, they are fed by both adult birds. Be careful at the nest. Grown up chicks are noisy, before flying they can briefly crawl out of the hollow and hide back in case of danger. The brood stays together for several days, then breaks up.

A narrow specialization in nutrition in both adults and chicks is characteristic of the wryneck. The last, until the fourth day of their life, parents bring only ant larvae, then along with larvae and pupae, and later - only pupae. The male and female consume the same food as the chicks, but the number of adult ants prevails in them and in some cases reaches 95% of the total food composition. Sometimes other insects are also found in their food: beetles (May beetles, small dung beetles, bark beetle larvae), lepidoptera (caterpillars and moth butterflies, leafworm caterpillars), orthoptera, aphids. All these feeds are collected partly on the trunks and branches of trees, but mainly on the ground, in forest glades and open places, which explains their desire to settle near the outskirts of the forest. In addition, they also feed on mollusk shells; as a mineral admixture, the chicks also receive sand.

Although according to scientists who observed the feeding of chicks in July 1976, it was found that all the food of chicks consists only of ants and their pupae. Other types of food (mollusks, larvae of caddisflies, leaf beetles, ground beetles, bark beetles, lepidoptera) were not found.

In August-September they fly off singly, occasionally there are groups of several birds. The main wintering grounds are in Central Africa and South Asia. Adult birds are very attached to their territory and tend to return there in the spring. The young return to their area, but are widely dispersed from their specific birthplace. begin to breed at the age of less than a year, the maximum known age is 10 years.

The question of the economic significance of the vertineck is complex and debatable. It is generally believed that this bird is harmful by the extermination of red ants useful for the forest. But studies in the Oksky Reserve (Evstratova, 1961) showed that the basis of the food of the little rat is not red, but black ants.

White-backed woodpecker (Dendrocopos leucotos)

The white-backed woodpecker is listed in the Red Book of Buryatia. Slightly larger than the spotted woodpecker and similar in coloration. Distinguished by the white color of the lower back and the innermost flight feathers, black longitudinal strokes on the sides; undertail pink. The cap of the male is completely red, with whitish specks; the top of the head of the female is black.

Juveniles have a gray “dirt” on the chest, the black color on the wings and upper back has a brownish tint, the pink spot on the undertail is smaller. Already in the nest, the sex of the chicks can be determined: the males have a red cap with black “blots”, the females have a dirty black one. Weight 100-130 g, length 26-31, wing 14, 3-15, 9, wingspan 44-49.

White-backed woodpecker. Photo: Alastair Rae

For the first time, the white-backed woodpecker was mentioned in the southwestern Transbaikalia in 1891 by Molleson V.S., and in the southeastern Transbaikalia - in 1929 by Shtegman B.K.

It lives in light deciduous forests and mixed forests of various types, but prefers old, often swampy birch forests and sparse areas of elm and willow plantations in floodplains. Very rare in pine-deciduous forests with rotten trees and stumps. During autumn-winter migrations it occurs in cities.

The white-backed woodpecker is one of the very rare and poorly studied birds in the south of Eastern Siberia. Currently, there is little data on its distribution and the nature of its stay in Transbaikalia. According to Izmailov I.V. and Borovitskaya G.K. Selenga was 0.1 OS / km 2. In more northern regions, it was either not observed at all (Izmailov, 1967), or only single flights were noted (Skryabin, Filonov, 1962). Information on the ecology of this species is completely absent.

White-backed woodpeckers start nesting earlier than all other woodpeckers, in April-May. They make hollows in dead rotten aspens, alders, birches and other deciduous trees, at very different heights. The hollow is very spacious, much larger and higher than that of the spotted woodpecker. Every year they make a new hollow, the old ones are not used. In clutch 3-7, more often - 4-6 white eggs, their dimensions are 26-31 x 19-22 mm. The male and female incubate for 14-16 days. Chicks sit in the hollow for 27-28 days. Unlike the chicks of other woodpeckers, they cry little, only when they are fed by adults.

Both parents feed the chicks, but the male brings food much less often than the female. It has a watchdog function. The frequency of feeding is quite low - 4 times per hour. Feeding activity is somewhat higher in the morning and evening hours (5-6 times per hour).

The female flies quite far for food - 200-300 m from the nest, while the male constantly stays within a radius of 40-50 m and, when disturbed, immediately appears at the nest. Birds forage in the lower (surface) part of the tree. They spend up to 3-5 minutes looking for food on one tree. Departure of chicks does not come at the same time. After emergence, parents and fledglings stay together near the nest for about a week, then they begin to move and meet singly in different habitats.

White-backed woodpeckers feed mainly on various insects living in rotten wood and under the bark of dead trees: larvae of barbels, horntails, woodworm caterpillars, leaf beetles, and occasionally spiders. In the winter diet, in addition to insects, there is a small amount of plant foods, in particular the fruits of bird cherry, mountain ash.

For most of their lives, woodpeckers of this species are engaged in peeling bark from dead wood, mainly birch. At the end of summer they eat berries and nuts. Cones are not hammered.

They live settled or migrate. Young birds are most mobile after the breakup of broods in the middle of summer. Pairs are constant and exist all year round.

Grey-haired woodpecker (Picus canus)

The gray-haired woodpecker is larger than the spotted woodpecker. The dorsal side is grayish-green, the loins are bright greenish-yellow. The underside of the body and head are mostly grey. The eyes are white, with a greyish-blue, reddish or pink tinge. The male has a red cap, the female has only black streaks on the crown, there is no red, the green color on the back is dimmer.

Young birds are colored like adults, males already have a red cap, but the entire plumage is more gray, almost entirely with indistinct blackish ripples, “whiskers” and bridle are indistinct, eyes are reddish or red-brown. Weight 90-170 g, length 25-28, wing 14, 3-15, 1, wingspan 38-42 cm.

In the pre-nesting time, the male performs a loud song consisting of a series (usually 6-10) of monotonous, but melodic, slightly melancholy unhurried calls “kyuyu-kuyu-kuyu ...”, “keel-keel-keel”, “kii-kii-kii ... ". Many other sounds are used in communication.

Gray woodpecker. Photo: arudhio

The gray-haired woodpecker lives in mixed and deciduous forests, preferring areas of tall aspen forests of middle and old age. Willingly settles in light floodplain forests with a large number of dead and drying trees, developed undergrowth. Young stands and woodlands avoids. Usually for nesting it chooses areas with a variety of tree species, large clearings and places where one type of forest passes into another. In the autumn-winter period, it often flies into cities and other settlements.

Hollows are hollowed out by a male and a female, most often in aspens or other deciduous trees at a height of 3-5 m from the ground, the depth of the hollow is 25-30, the diameter is 15-20 cm, the notch is round, about 6 cm. In clutch 5-10, more often - 6-7 white eggs, their dimensions are 24-31 x 19-24 mm. Incubation begins after the laying is completed and lasts 14-15 (up to 17) days. The male usually sits at night, the female - during the day. At the nest, they are careful, from the beginning of incubation and often until the chicks fly out, adults almost do not give a voice. The chicks leave the nest at the age of 24-28 days. 2-3 days before departure, almost all day long, one of the chicks protrudes from the hollow and gives a voice.

The gray-haired woodpecker feeds mainly on ants and especially likes to feast on some of their species; where these species of ants are rare, probably not a single gray-haired woodpecker will settle for the summer. And in winter he also tries to get himself these ants. Therefore, it is not surprising that he has to move when the ground is covered with such deep snow that it is difficult or completely impossible for him to get to his favorite food. Hollowing trees, he pulls out of them all the insects and larvae that he comes across, and if he happens to stumble upon naked caterpillars in the summer, he eats them too. In late autumn and winter, he also feeds on plant foods.

Adult birds are sedentary, young at the end of summer and autumn actively settle. In winter, adults can also roam. More often than other woodpeckers, they can be seen in cities and villages climbing wooden houses, examining cracks in brickwork.

The maximum known age is over 5 years.



There is a thud through the woods like a drum roll. This is a motley bird in a red "cap" busy with her work. She herself is about 30 centimeters long, and weighs from 60 grams. The back, head and upper part of the tail are blue-black. Under the tail, on its inner side, there is a red plumage. The shoulders are white, the belly too. There is a black longitudinal stripe on the back. The white muzzle is also decorated with a black stripe resembling a mustache. Wings - white with black. This is a woodpecker. One of its varieties is the big motley.

Species of woodpeckers and their habitat

This bird is distributed almost all over the globe. You will not meet her only in the icy Antarctica and on some small islands. Woodpeckers do not live in Australia either. On the other continents, wherever there are forests, there are definitely woodpeckers.

These are predominantly forest dwellers. Moreover, they settle in any forests: both deciduous and coniferous. They can choose the area for their residence, both dry and swampy.

There are a lot of varieties of woodpeckers. According to some estimates, there are currently about 200 of them, according to others - a little more species.

Their color varies depending on the species. And, quite significantly. So, there are woodpeckers with green plumage. This species feels great on a horizontal surface, unlike others. The largest are black woodpeckers. The most gluttonous is a gray-haired three-toed.

In Russia, there are about 14 varieties of them. The most common is motley. This species has several subspecies. In city squares and parks you can meet a small motley. In general, woodpeckers do not settle near people as often as other birds. Their main habitat is forests.

Despite significant differences in size and color, depending on the variety, all woodpeckers have several distinctive features that are common to all of them. Almost everyone has a red spot on their head. In motley - on the back of the head. This sign is perhaps the most distinctive, by which many recognize him.

Distinguishes woodpeckers and the structure of their body, some of its features. So, woodpeckers are not adapted to being on a horizontal plane, with the exception of one species. You almost never see them on the ground. The tail serves as a springy support for birds to move vertically (along the trunk of a tree). They move up the tree, with a slight slope to the side.

Woodpeckers have hard feathers. Especially in the tail section. They are very close to the body.

The woodpecker's legs are short and strong, concave inward. The strength of their beak is fully consistent with their main occupation - chiselling wood. He is very durable. And the tongue is long, thin, rough, with notches at the end. When extracting food from the trunk, woodpeckers can stick it out a few centimeters forward (sometimes up to 15 cm.). And, bugs and spiders stick to it. Inside, their tongue wraps around their heads. The woodpecker breathes with one nostril - the left. And through the right he has a long tongue.

The woodpecker's tongue is visible in the photo.
Great spotted woodpecker.
Great spotted woodpecker.
Great spotted woodpecker.

Great spotted woodpecker.

Great spotted woodpecker in profile.
Great spotted woodpecker male.
Great spotted woodpecker.

The diet of woodpeckers at different times of the year

Do not disdain woodpeckers and dead animals. Still, they can be called predators. They eat smaller birds: sparrows, tits. They can destroy their nests by drinking eggs and stealing chicks, which they will certainly eat later. So, woodpeckers will not refuse the meat menu.

In spring, their food is the buds of trees, shoots of young plants. Do not mind woodpeckers to drink and tree sap. They especially love birch. The sucking woodpecker, for example, feeds exclusively on them.

What do woodpeckers eat in the harsh winter? As already mentioned, these birds rarely settle near humans. But, and they can be found in the winter at bird feeders. Especially if there are tree plantings in the city, or other settlement.

In the forest, woodpeckers eat cones, berries and seeds left on the trees in winter. Sometimes, walking through the forest, you can see on the ground, near a tree, a bunch of walnut husks. The woodpecker did it. They stick the cones into the crevices of the trees and peel them, extracting nuts. Sometimes, woodpeckers store them for future use, hiding them in tree crevices. Some species make provisions for the cold period. Moreover, in the fall they will not eat them, leaving them for more hungry days.

Great spotted woodpecker.
Woodpecker in flight.
Woodpecker in flight.
Male great spotted woodpecker.

Woodpecker lifestyle

Woodpeckers are non-migratory birds. Having chosen the forest area, they will not leave it. This can happen only in extreme cases. For example, these places will become poor, there will be little food. Deforestation, of course, can also lead to the resettlement of this bird species. After all, the main activity of woodpeckers is the study of trees.

For this occupation they spend most of their lives. By the way, they live, sometimes more than 10 years. The minimum duration of their life is from 5 years. Woodpeckers lead to death, most often, human activity and predator attacks. A woodpecker can be caught and eaten by, for example, a kite or a hawk, or other large birds of prey.

Woodpeckers living closer to the north, nevertheless, with the intensification of cold weather, begin to look for a warmer place. But, once they have moved, for whatever reason, they do not return back. And so, they lead a sedentary lifestyle. Sometimes, woodpeckers make small trips around the surrounding area, in search of new trees and stumps to study.

Having found a suitable tree, the woodpecker gets down to business. Having flown up to the chosen plant, he will sit down, first, on the lower part of the trunk. Further, as necessary, the woodpecker will move along it in jerky upward movements, with a slight slope to the side. But the woodpecker will not just sit on a branch. It is not adapted to a horizontal position.

The flight of these birds is undulating. They don't fly straight. The trajectory of their air movement fluctuates to the sides. The wing beat frequency is quite high. They fly fast.

Woodpeckers are loners. They don't huddle in packs. But, many of them, having chosen a mate for themselves and parted after feeding the chicks, reunite next year with the same individual.

Woodpecker with a butterfly in its beak.
Woodpecker with prey.
Woodpecker with a seed in its beak.
Woodpecker and tit at the feeder.

"Family life" woodpeckers

Birds begin to take care of the reproduction of offspring from the middle of winter. During their mating season, their cries and knocks are heard throughout the forest. Woodpeckers are generally very noisy creatures. In addition to knocking on trunks, they also make noise with tree branches, setting them in motion. During the choice of a partner, male woodpeckers arrange dances and flights to attract females. And their songs are short, often repeated trills. Also, for the same, attracting a female, choosing a dry bough that will perfectly spread the sound, the woodpecker will arrange such a drumming that it can be heard around the area within a radius of 1.5 km.

The place for the future incubation of the chicks is chosen by the male. The choice falls, as a rule, on trees with soft wood.

By mid-May, their mating games are over. And, the couple is taken for arranging the hollow. Both are engaged in construction alternately: both the male and the female. They line the “floor” in the hollow with chips.

Usually, it takes woodpeckers no more than two weeks to build housing. But, there is such a species of woodpeckers living on the American continent, which can be engaged in such a responsible business for several years! Here is such a "serious" American woodpecker! This subspecies is called cockade.

Also, woodpeckers, after completing their annual parenting mission, may leave their home. Next year they will make a new hollow for themselves. And in the old one, titmouse and other homeless feathered inhabitants of the forest can safely settle.

Interesting woodpeckers equip their hollows. They usually hide the entrance there under the branches. And sometimes, you can see their house under a kind of "balcony" - tree fungus. It also plays a camouflage role.

When the hollow is ready, the female woodpecker lays her eggs. Usually, clutch does not exceed 5 - 7 eggs. Hatching them, to a greater extent, is done by the male. Sometimes, they change with the female. But both parents will feed the chicks.

After two weeks, blind and deaf chicks are born. They have no plumage in the first days of life. But, in a month, already feathered chicks will run along the tree trunk. At first, they will wait at the entrance to the hollow of their parents with food. And a little later, they will run all over the tree, not yet able to fly. For about a month, young woodpeckers will spend near mom and dad. And, already with the approach of their first winter in their lives, independent life begins. Parents are also separated from each other, and from their brood. After all, the woodpecker is an individualist!

A female woodpecker at the nest.

By the way...

Woodpeckers hammer trees not only for food. This also helps them in the spring call of females. And yet, this is how they let you know who is in charge in this territory.

Woodpeckers don't like to fly. Although they do it very well. The woodpecker will not rush to fly away even in case of danger. At first, he will simply hide by jumping to the other side of the trunk, so that the predator does not see him. And he will watch him, looking out from behind a tree. And, only in the case of the inevitably dangerous proximity of the enemy, he will fly away.

A woodpecker lives in America without fail making reserves. This is an acorn woodpecker. And, he stores acorns, hiding them in the cracks of tree trunks.

You can meet a woodpecker even in the desert! There he hollows cacti. Not all in a row, of course. Tree-like.

There are species of woodpeckers that make their nests in the ground. They dig minks and line them with animal hair.

Woodpeckers are rather voracious birds. This is due to the fact that they spend a lot of strength and energy on chiselling trees. Therefore, they experience an almost constant feeling of hunger. And they hammer trunks with great force and frequency. In a second, they are able to make up to 25 hits! Fortunately, their beak is very strong. And the brain structure is arranged in such a way that it protects them from concussions.

A woodpecker hammers a tree - chips fly! And to him - at least that! It is so arranged that literally a moment before they hit the tree, a natural protective reflex is triggered - the eyelids cover their eyes. And, they are protected from chips falling into them!

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Everyone who has ever been in the forest heard a dry fractional knock. This is the sound a woodpecker makes. This bird is distributed throughout the globe and is found wherever there is a forest. After all, the woodpecker lives only on trees, his legs are not adapted for walking on the ground. This interesting bird has long attracted the attention of scientists. There was a time when they even considered it a pest and tried to destroy it. But then they found out that the woodpecker is a forest orderly, so now he is often called a forest doctor. After all, he hollows only dry and larvae-infected trees, often saving them from death.

What are woodpeckers

This bird belongs to the woodpecker family, which includes more than two hundred species. Their greatest diversity is observed in the forests of North America. And in our country there will be a little more than ten species of woodpeckers. The most famous of them are:

• Great spotted woodpecker. This bird is quite large, the wingspan sometimes reaches half a meter. Most common in European forests.
• It looks like a small spotted woodpecker almost the size of a sparrow.
• Another large species, often found in our forests, is yellow, or black woodpecker. This bird is quite noisy and active, gouges out large hollows and eats a lot of harmful insects.
• The green woodpecker looks quite unusual and beautiful. But he is very careful, so it is difficult to see him.
• The three-toed woodpecker is an unusual bird, as it is missing one toe on its feet.
• This family also includes the wryneck, although it differs greatly from other woodpeckers in behavior and appearance. She does not make a hollow and does not know how to climb trees.

Description of the woodpecker bird

Where do woodpeckers live

This forest bird is found wherever there are trees. Most species live in forests and prefer loneliness. But some can live next to a person, for example, in city parks and squares. The only condition for a woodpecker to live normally is the presence of trees, so it can be found almost anywhere on the planet. They are absent only in the Arctic and on the islands near Australia. The woodpecker is a settled bird. He rarely flies far from where he lives. Usually the area where the bird feeds is about 2 hectares. Very rarely, in search of food, individual individuals can move over long distances, but in this case they do not return back. This feature of them is the answer to the question of whether the woodpecker is a migratory bird or not. Most of them are omnivores and easily tolerate frosts. Therefore, it makes no sense for them to fly away.

woodpecker lifestyle

It is very interesting to observe how different birds of the forest behave. The woodpecker is quite unpretentious, he is not used to sitting idle. For this bird to live normally, it is enough that there are trees. The most favorable conditions for their reproduction exist near rivers and other water bodies, especially in rainy summers. At this time, the wood is exposed to various putrefactive processes and fungal diseases, as well as insect attacks. It is these trees that the woodpecker loves. This bird hollows them out not only in search of food, but every year it prepares a new hollow for itself. True, not all types of woodpeckers can do this. For example, verticeks use ready-made hollows. A feature of the woodpeckers' lifestyle is their amazing ability to quickly climb a tree trunk. Nature endowed them for this purpose with short paws with tenacious fingers and a strong tail. Even woodpecker chicks begin to climb the trunk before they fly. The lifestyle of this bird does not change even in winter. To answer the question of whether a woodpecker is a migratory bird or not, you just need to go to a forest or park on a quiet frosty day. Frequent fractional knocking in the air is evidence that these birds remain in our area for the winter.

What does woodpecker eat

What bird can stay for the winter in our climate? Only the one that is omnivorous. Yes, woodpeckers can eat a lot.

Most often, of course, they feed on insects, which are exterminated from under the bark of trees. To get them, the woodpecker uses a long tongue, which often exceeds the size of the beak twice. In addition, it is sticky, it has sharp notches. With their help, the woodpecker can get insects out of narrow passages in the wood. In large numbers, this bird destroys insects and their larvae harmful to trees. Woodpeckers also eat various caterpillars, termites, ants and even snails. In the cold season, these birds feed mainly on the seeds of trees, most often conifers. But on occasion, they can eat berries and any fruits. In times of famine, many birds move closer to human habitation and feed on food waste.

What is interesting woodpecker

• This is the only bird that has an ear for music. Woodpeckers can knock on wood not only for the purpose of obtaining food or making a nest. Sometimes you can watch how a bird hammers on a dry branch and listens.

• The woodpecker's tongue is amazing. In some individuals, it can reach a length of 10 centimeters. It is sticky, with sharp notches, on which, like hooks, a woodpecker hooks insects from under the bark of a tree. With it, he can also feast on fruits.
• The woodpecker is one of the few birds that cannot walk on the ground. Their legs and tail are adapted only for climbing trees.

So, we presented a description of the bird. The woodpecker is very handsome. The bright red cap and variegated color make these birds an adornment of any forest.

What are the benefits of woodpeckers

These birds were previously considered pests of the forest, they were even tried to be exterminated. But then it turned out that woodpeckers hollow only sick and old trees infected with insects. By doing this, they save the forest from the spread of pests. In addition, woodpeckers make a new hollow every year. And squirrels and other birds settle in their old dwellings.

Woodpeckers help the inhabitants of the forest not only by providing shelter. Some species of these birds, when obtaining food, remove entire sections of the bark from trees, thereby exposing the passages of insects. And it's easier for other birds to get them. And now the woodpecker is considered one of the most useful forest birds.

Order Woodpeckers / Picariae

Woodpeckers are small and medium size: the smallest are smaller than a sparrow, the largest - with a crow. Appearance and coloration of woodpeckers are quite different. Some species have a monochromatic brownish coloration, others have a variegated, often quite bright plumage. The wings are blunt, usually consisting of 10-11 primary flight feathers. The tail often consists of 10-12 helmsmen. Sexual dimorphism is weakly expressed; chicks are colored similarly to adults. The legs of woodpeckers are usually four-toed, short, but strong, well adapted to climbing the trunk and branches of trees: in most species, 2 fingers are turned forward, 2 back. The claws are hooked, which helps the bird to easily stay on the trees. All woodpeckers are diurnal, the vast majority are forest birds. They begin to breed at the age of about a year, forming pairs during the nesting period. Woodpeckers nest in hollows or burrows. The number of eggs in a clutch varies greatly. More often, the clutch consists of 2-12 single-colored white eggs, which are laid directly on the bottom of the nest; nest litter is usually absent. Both the male and the female (but more than the female) incubate the clutch for about 2 weeks. The chicks hatch blind and in the vast majority of species are naked (without downy attire). After leaving the nests, the chicks stay together for some time with the whole family, but soon the brood breaks up. Most woodpeckers are quarrelsome birds: they can be found in groups only in places rich in food. Woodpeckers lead a sedentary lifestyle, but in autumn many species wander, flying to places where they did not nest. They fly even farther from their nesting sites in winter. Almost all woodpeckers feed on insects, rarely eat plant foods. Many species, especially those found in the temperate zone, switch to feeding on tree seeds in winter. Some species consume exclusively plant foods. By exterminating insects, many of which damage trees and shrubs, woodpeckers bring certain benefits to forestry. In addition, most woodpecker-like nests are hollowed out, and other hollow-nesting birds subsequently willingly settle in them, the vast majority of which are insectivorous birds useful for forestry. Woodpeckers are distributed in all forests of the globe, with the exception of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Madagascar; especially a lot of them in South America. This order includes 380 species, united in 2 suborders: jacamars (Galbulae) and woodpeckers proper (Pici). Birds from the jacamar suborder are characterized by an elongated body, a long, almost awl-shaped beak with bristles at the base, short wings, a long stepped tail and soft fluffy plumage with a golden sheen, for which the jacamar is also called glitter tyanki. These birds are widespread in Central and South America. Jacamars are divided into 2 families: chatterboxes (Galbulidae) and powder puffs (Bucconidae). The suborder of woodpeckers proper includes outwardly very different birds, characterized by a strong, usually massive beak and a dense, stocky body with a medium-sized tail. These birds are distributed in America, Africa, Europe and Asia, almost everywhere where tree and shrub vegetation is found. Actually woodpeckers are divided into 4 families.

white-billed woodpecker / Campephilus principalis

The white-billed woodpecker is found in the southeast of North America, where it inhabits vast expanses of swampy forests. The coloration of this woodpecker is strict. The main color of its plumage is dense black, from the back of the head on the sides of the neck there are two wide white stripes that connect on the back, so the middle of the back is also white. The wing, with the exception of the shoulder feathers and the outer edge of the three outer primaries, is white. On the back of the head there is a large beautiful crest of elongated feathers - the male is bright red, the female is black. The eyes are bright yellow and shiny, the legs are lead-gray, the beak is light, ivory. For the color of the beak, this woodpecker got its name.The contours of the body of the white-billed woodpecker are also remarkable: its neck is thin, making the head seem disproportionately large.

white-billed woodpecker

P about the size, this is a very large woodpecker: the length of the bird exceeds 0.5 m. White-billed woodpeckers live in pairs, which probably do not break up all their lives. Both birds of a pair are always together, but even at a distance it is not difficult to distinguish them: the female is noisier, but more careful than the male. The breeding season starts in March. White-billed woodpeckers are very cautious and stay in the most secluded corners of the forest during the nesting period. The hollow is always arranged in the trunk of a living tree, usually in oak, always at a considerable height; often the inlet of the hollow is located under a large bough or branch that protects against water flowing into the hollow when it rains. Both the male and the female take part in hollowing out the hollow. The clutch consists of 5-7 pure white eggs placed directly on the bottom of the hollow. In the southern regions of the range, these birds breed chicks twice a season, in the north they have only one clutch. In its habits, the white-billed woodpecker is somewhat different from other woodpeckers. His flight is extremely beautiful and, like other woodpeckers, wavy. But, flying from one tree to another, the bird first climbs to the top of the tree on which it was, and, flying from it, does not flap its wings, but, opening them, plans down; she describes a smooth arc, admiring the beauty of her plumage to the most demanding artist. This woodpecker does not like to fly long distances and prefers to climb the trunk and branches of trees and jump from one closely standing tree to another. Climbing a tree, the white-billed woodpecker incessantly utters a sonorous, clear and pleasant cry “pet-pet-pet”. He repeats this three-syllable cry so often that one has to doubt whether the bird is silent for even a few minutes during the day. His voice can be heard from miles away. The woodpecker extracts its food by carefully examining the trunks and large branches of trees. Starting at the bottom of the tree and climbing in a spiraling line around the trunk, the bird inspects the cracks and crevices in the bark and pecks at them, looking for insects. The strength of this bird is very high: with one blow of its beak, it beats off pieces of bark and chips up to 17-20 cm in length, and when it finds a shrunken, insect-infested tree, it knocks the bark off 2-3 m2 of the trunk surface in a few hours and thus in 2-3 days completely sands the wood. The larvae, pupae and adults of beetles living in the bark and wood, as well as open-living insects living on the surface of the trunks, most often become the prey of white-billed woodpeckers. At the end of summer and in autumn, these birds eat berries and fruits of wild trees. These beautiful birds are often destroyed by people for their extremely beautiful head with a bright tuft and ivory beak. Travelers, greedy for various "reminders", seek to acquire the head of a white-billed woodpecker as an exotic souvenir from those places where this bird forms an integral part of the landscape of terrible and at the same time wonderful swamps. At present, the white-billed woodpecker is a very rare bird: it has already disappeared from most of its range.

acorn woodpecker / Melanerpes formicivorus

The acorn woodpecker makes huge stocks. In autumn, he hollows out in the trunks and large branches of oaks, eucalyptus, pines, sycamores, and even in telegraph poles and walls of wooden houses, many thousands of small potholes - cells, into each of which he drives an acorn tightly. The size of such pantries is impressive: in the mountain forest of California, they counted 20 thousand acorns driven by a woodpecker into the bark of a sycamore tree, and about 50 thousand acorns were found in the bark of another pine tree! These woodpeckers are also remarkable in that they usually live in groups of 3-12 birds all year round. Each such group occupies a rather large territory, from which outsiders are expelled. All members of the group take part in the defense of this territory; all of them participate in the storage of acorns and collectively use their reserves.

acorn woodpecker

AT In the spring, the group does not split into pairs; all females of the group lay their eggs in one common nest. All members of the group take part in the incubation of the clutch and in the feeding of the chicks. However, it is not uncommon (in some years and in some places) to meet pairs of birds leading a typically monogamous lifestyle, but this is in most cases a temporary phenomenon.

green woodpecker / Picus virdis

The green woodpecker is a very beautiful bird. The dorsal side and wings are yellowish-olive, the uppertail is brilliant yellow, the primary feathers are brown, the tail is brownish-black with grayish transverse stripes. The top of the head, the back of the head and the stripe running from the lower jaw to the neck are carmine red, the forehead, space around the eyes and cheeks are black. The ears, throat and goiter are whitish, the rest of the ventral side of the body is pale green with dark streaks. In terms of body shape, this woodpecker resembles a large motley woodpecker, but is larger than it: the length of a green woodpecker is 35-37 cm, weight is up to 250 g.The green woodpecker lives in deciduous and clarified mixed forests of Europe east to the Volga, in Western Asia (except for its northeastern regions) and in the Caucasus.

green woodpecker

O It lives best where open spaces alternate with forests and where there are many trees of different ages. These are very cautious birds - individual pairs settle far from each other, and therefore it is not easy to meet them. However, during the nesting period, the birds give out their presence with loud calls: the female and male call in turn all day long. The hollows of the bird are hollowed out mainly in decaying trees: old aspens, sedge, willows. Clutch, which occurs in most of the range in May (which is quite late for woodpeckers), consists of 5-9 shiny white eggs. Both the male and the female take part in their incubation, as well as in feeding the chicks and hollowing out the hollow. The green woodpecker feeds on various insects, which it collects on tree trunks. His favorite food is ants, which he eats in huge quantities. To catch them, the woodpecker willingly descends to the ground and, in search of ant pupae - “ant eggs”, breaks deep passages inside the anthills.

earthen woodpecker / Gecolaptes olivaceus

The earthen woodpecker is a bird of medium size for woodpeckers, whose body length is about 25 cm. It is painted very modestly: its plumage is predominantly olive-brown with yellowish-brown trunks of flight feathers and orange-brown tail feathers. The rump and ventral side of the body with an admixture of red, the head is gray. This woodpecker is widespread in South Africa, where it keeps in treeless areas, inhabiting outcrops of mountain slopes and high river banks or slopes of ravines. In terms of lifestyle, this original woodpecker is an amazing example of adaptation to the conditions of an area unusual for woodpeckers.As a rule, the observer sees the bird sitting on some large boulder or flying low above the ground from one rocky outcrop to another.

earthen woodpecker

L you can occasionally see the earthen woodpecker in a dense bush. On the ground, he moves by jumping. This is why it is called an earthen woodpecker because it does not hammer trees, but breaks through its passages in the steep banks of rivers, on the slopes of hills and along the slopes of ravines, as well as in the walls of earthen buildings, both in search of food and for arranging a dwelling in which it displays chicks. This dwelling is a hole about a meter long, at the end of which narrow vaults are distributed to the sides and up, forming a small cave. The bottom of the bird cave is usually lined with shreds of animal hair. Here, during the breeding season, birds lay 3-5 pure white eggs. For most of their lives, these woodpeckers dig in the ground in search of food, they also look for food on the ground, on the rocky walls of abandoned buildings and on the sheer walls of rocks. Their food consists of insects and their larvae, as well as worms, spiders and some other invertebrates.

Golden Woodpecker / Colaptes auratus

The golden woodpecker is a small bird with a body length of about 27 cm. The coloring of this woodpecker is quite bright and beautiful. The dorsal side of the body is clay-brown with black transverse streaks and white uppertail, the ventral side is white with black spots. The head is gray, surrounded by a red stripe, on the goiter there is a black stripe of a crescent shape. The trunks of the flight and tail feathers, as well as the underside of the wings, are golden yellow. During the flight, the woodpecker often flaps its wings. Each time he waves them, his golden feathers flash brightly against the blue sky. The golden woodpecker is widespread in North America, where it inhabits open plains. Nests are arranged in hollows. Its meat is highly valued by many hunters and is often served at the table.

golden woodpecker

red-headed woodpecker/ Melanerpes erythrocephalus

The red-headed woodpecker is a small bird for woodpeckers: its body length is about 23 cm. Its body is dense, its head is large, its neck is short, and its tail is rounded. This woodpecker has a bright red head and neck, while the back, wings and tail are black, and the ventral side is white. The red-headed woodpecker is one of the most common birds in North America. Here, these woodpeckers keep in sparse forests, often flying out to feed on the edges and flying, especially in the summer-autumn period, into settlements. In the spring, starting to breed, birds very rarely hollow out a new hollow; usually they find and clear, and sometimes deepen the old.This hollow is always placed in a shriveled tree with rotting wood.

red-headed woodpecker

H Often on such a tree several hollows are hollowed out, but only one is occupied. In healthy green trees, these woodpeckers cannot hollow out hollows for themselves. The disposition of the red-headed woodpecker is very cheerful and mischievous. Sitting somewhere on a fence post near a field or road and seeing a passing person, the woodpecker slowly moves to the opposite side of the post from the person, from behind which he looks out from time to time, as if trying to guess the intentions of the approaching one. If a person passes by, then the woodpecker, deftly jumping to the top of the column, begins to drum on it with his beak, as if rejoicing that he managed to remain unnoticed by the person. If a person approaches him, then the woodpecker flies to the next post, then to the next one and starts drumming on it, as if teasing the person and inviting him to play hide and seek. Often these restless birds also appear near houses: they climb on them, knock on the roofs with their beaks. They cause a lot of trouble when bread and berries and fruits ripen in the gardens. These birds, arriving in large flocks, eat berries and fruits in huge quantities, completely devastating entire gardens. Extremely curious red-headed woodpeckers deal with apples. The bird sticks its beak into the apple with all its might and, clinging to the branch with its paws, plucks the fruit planted on its beak, and then, with this burden, clumsily flies to the nearest fence. Sitting on a post, the woodpecker breaks the apple into pieces and eats it. Birds produce even greater devastation in grain fields, not only eating ripened grains, but also breaking stems and trampling ears into the ground. Finally, these birds are also capable of predatory: they look for nests of small birds, and often artificial nests, and drink the eggs found in them. At times they even attack dovecotes. Having satisfied their hunger, red-headed woodpeckers gather in small flocks and, sitting on the branches of a dried tree, begin a kind of hunting for flying insects from here. Birds rush at them from a distance of 4-6 m, make very deft turns in the air, grab insects and, uttering joyful cries, return to their original place. Watching this competition from the side is extremely pleasant: making complex pirouettes and turns, the birds demonstrate all the beauty of their bright plumage. Red-headed woodpeckers feed on seeds and grains of various plants, fruits, berries and insects. Due to the damage that red-headed woodpeckers cause to fields and gardens, local residents ruthlessly exterminate them in huge numbers.

Copper Woodpecker / Colaptes mexicanus

The area in which the copper woodpecker lives is a dry desert overgrown with pale green undersized agaves. Here and there among the different types of artichokes that make their way through the white sand, large yuccas grow alone. E that area, lifeless for most of the year, makes a depressing impression on anyone traveling through it. And the more unexpected and joyful for the traveler is the meeting with flocks of copper woodpeckers. Looking closely at the flocks of these birds, you can see that the woodpeckers all the time fly up to the dried flower-bearing stems of the agaves, peck them for a while, then fly to the trunk of the yucca, which is also pecked, after which they again fly to the agave, etc. They peck out this from dried flower-bearing stems of agave acorns, which at one time were placed there by them. An interesting custom of the copper woodpecker is to make pantries in the dried stalks of agaves, where he hides acorns. To do this, the woodpecker punches a small rounded hole in the lower part of the dried agave stem, reaching the cavity inside the stem, and pushes acorns into it until it fills that part of the cavity that is below the hole. Then, a little higher than the first, he punches a second hole, through which he fills with acorns the part of the cavity located between these holes, etc. The cavity inside the stem is narrow, and the woodpecker usually has to expend considerable effort pushing the acorns down. Sometimes, therefore, only one acorn is laid in each hole, but in this case there are a lot of holes in the agave stem, behind each of them there is an acorn. Splitting the stem lengthwise, you can see that it is filled with a whole column of acorns. The copper woodpecker spends a lot of time and effort on storing acorns for future use, but, perhaps, he has to use no less labor to collect acorns: in the desert area where agaves grow, there are no oaks, and therefore woodpeckers have to fly for acorns for many kilometers to the slopes nearby mountains. However, as compensation for such hard work, copper woodpeckers can live in hot weather in this sun-scorched desert, eating exclusively acorns stored for this occasion. The way they are eaten is also amazing. Taking out an acorn, the woodpecker clamps it into a hole specially hollowed out for this purpose in the bark of a dry yucca trunk. The woodpecker easily breaks the acorn shell with its beak blows, and eats the nucleolus. Thus, during the dry season, these birds gather in places overgrown with agaves, where their warehouses are located, and when it rains, they scatter through the valleys, where they feed on insects, a significant part of which are ants pecked on the ground.

sharp-winged woodpecker / Jungipicus kizuki

The sharp-winged woodpecker is a small, sparrow-sized bird: it weighs only 19-25 g. Its color is variegated. Back, loin and wings in alternating black and white transverse stripes. The head from above and from the sides, as well as the back of the neck are brownish-gray. The sides of the neck are white, delimited from below by black stripes. A white stripe runs from the beak through the eye to the white spot on the neck. The goiter and throat are white below, the rest of the ventral side of the body is brownish with frequent dark longitudinal streaks. The middle pairs of tail feathers are black, the rest are striped in black and white. The male differs from the female in the presence of a few red feathers on the sides of the back of the head.

sharp-winged woodpecker

X a characteristic feature of this bird (as well as the whole genus of sharp-winged woodpeckers) is the presence of wings that are sharper than those of other woodpeckers. The sharp-winged woodpecker is distributed in the northeastern provinces of China, on the Korean Peninsula, on the Japanese and southern Kuril Islands, on Sakhalin and in the Ussuri Territory. It is found in a variety of forest stands from impenetrable thickets of hot valleys to subalpine forests. During nesting time, birds prefer to stay in plantations of soft tree species (velvet, linden, poplar, etc.), where it is easier for them to hollow out or find a hollow for themselves. Usually these woodpeckers nest in hollows of horizontal boughs or tree branches. Masonry occurs in May. Outside of the breeding season, sharp-winged woodpeckers are usually found in flocks of tits, with which they carefully examine the branches, leaves and needles of trees and shrubs in search of insects. During the gathering of food, this woodpecker can often be found climbing the stems of thick herbaceous plants, where the bird sometimes hollows out the stems, extracting insects living in the tissues of plants and their larvae, pecking out seeds that have not yet crumbled.

pampas woodpecker / Colaptes agricola

The pampas woodpecker is a beautiful, brightly colored bird. Her body is black, the sides of the head, as well as the sides and front of the neck are golden yellow, the throat is white. The stems of the flight feathers are golden yellow, the tail feathers are black, and the lining of the wings is golden ocher. The male and female differ in the color of the whiskers, which are red in the male and black in the female. pampas woodpecker - large bird with comparatively long legs and a less stiff tail than other woodpeckers. A soft tail is a poor support when climbing a vertical surface, and therefore this woodpecker usually sits on branches horizontally, across the branch, and climbs along the trunk only occasionally.This peculiar bird is widespread in the pampas of South America.

pampas woodpecker

During the breeding season, the male and female dig a hole in a steep bank of a river or in a steep slope, where the female lays her eggs. Sometimes, when there are no such slopes and cliffs in which birds can dig a hole, some free-standing tree with very soft wood is selected, where woodpeckers hollow out a hollow for themselves. These birds feed by walking on the ground and pecking at the invertebrates encountered. Sometimes they collect openly living insects on rare trees and bushes in the pampas. Occasionally, using their legs and beak, they dig worms and insect larvae out of the ground.

Great spotted woodpecker / Dendrocopos major

The great spotted woodpecker is a beautiful, indeed very colorful bird. Its predominant color consists of a combination of black and white tones. The top of the head and neck, the dorsal side and undertail are blue-black, the shoulders, cheeks, sides of the neck are white, the belly is off-white, the undertail is light red. The flight feathers are black with white spots forming white transverse stripes on the black background of the folded wing. The tail is black, except for the two outer tail feathers, which are white. The eyes are brownish-red, the beak is lead-black, the legs are dark brown. The male differs from the female by a red spot on the crown. Young birds are similar in color to adults, but they have a red spot on their forehead. The tail of a large spotted woodpecker is of medium length, pointed and very hard, since it serves mainly as a support when the bird climbs a tree trunk.

Great spotted woodpecker

H How important this supporting role of the tail is can be judged by the fact that during the period before the next molt, the tail feathers, being erased, are shortened by 10 mm or more! But the total length of the tail is 100 mm. The Great Spotted Woodpecker is a medium-sized bird: its body length is 23-26 cm, its weight is about 100 g. This woodpecker lives in the forests of North Africa (northern Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), in Europe and on adjacent islands, in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor, in Siberia (except for the northern regions of the taiga) and Primorye, as well as in Kamchatka, Sakhalin, the Japanese and Kuril Islands and on the Korean Peninsula. The woodpecker leads a sedentary lifestyle, but in cold weather it makes migrations. In the spring (February, March, April), woodpeckers become especially noisy and agile. Males often make a "trill". Sitting on the trunk, the male quickly strikes the dry knot with his beak, and the bough vibrating under these blows emits a kind of trill - “drum roll”, something like “tra-ta-ta ...”. This trill replaces the song of the great spotted woodpecker. You can hear it far away even in the dense forest. A female flies to this “song”, and a pair is formed. The formed pair zealously defends its nesting area, driving out all other woodpeckers from it. Somewhere in the middle of this area, the birds make their nest. For its device, a tree with soft or decaying wood is selected. The most commonly used is aspen, less often alder, even more rarely birch, oak and other species with hard wood. Usually on the trunk, at a height of 2-8 m from the ground - often under the cap of a tinder fungus, woodpeckers hollow out a hollow for themselves. Alternately changing, the male and female tirelessly hammer on the tree, splitting off pieces of wood 2-4 cm long, which are immediately thrown down. On last year's dried grass, and if the spring is late, on the snow near the tree trunk, you can see fresh light chips, through which you can easily find a freshly hollowed out hollow. The hollow has a depth of 28-35 cm, the inlet - notch has a diameter of 5-5.6 cm. At the end of April - in May, eggs are laid. The clutch usually consists of 5-7 shiny white eggs. Eggs are laid directly on the bottom of the hollow; often heavily crushed pieces of wood serve as litter. The eggs are incubated by both the male and the female alternately for 12-13 days. Chicks hatch blind and completely helpless, but with a well-developed calcaneal callus. The first days of life they sit quietly, the grown chicks scream loudly, demanding food. By this call, heard for 80-100 m, you can easily find their nest. Both adult birds take part in feeding the chicks. The chicks are very voracious, and the parents arrive at the nest with food every 2-4 minutes. The female usually feeds the chicks more often than the male. During the day, both adult birds bring food to the nest up to 300 times. Naturally, it is possible to collect a huge number of insects necessary for feeding chicks only from a large area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe forest. It is not surprising, therefore, that the hunting area of ​​a pair of woodpeckers occupies about 15 hectares. The chicks spend three weeks in the nest. The first 25-30 days after leaving the nest, the entire brood keeps together, and old birds first feed young, already well-flying birds. After some time, the young move to an independent life and begin to roam widely. Woodpeckers fly well and quickly, describing a smooth arc in the air: flapping its wings several times, the bird rises to the top of the arc, then folds its wings and swiftly, like a thrown spear, flies forward, quickly losing height, then flaps its wings again, etc. However, in all cases, they prefer to climb the trunk of a tree, using their wings only to fly to a neighboring tree. Even when the bird is in danger, it is in no hurry to fly away. Noticing, for example, the approach of a person, the woodpecker, as if unintentionally, without betraying the fact that he noticed the danger, crawls, continuing to look for something in the bumps of the bark, to the opposite side of the trunk and, climbing up the trunk, only occasionally looks out from behind it. as if casually watching a person. If you try to go around the tree, the bird will again move so that there is a trunk between it and the person. If a person tries to approach the bird, it will fly to a nearby tree, expressing its displeasure with a loud, sharp cry. The woodpecker's voice is carried far through the forest and resembles something like a jerky "boom", repeated either separately or several times in a row, when the bird is worried. Woodpeckers spend most of their time looking for food. In summer and early autumn, woodpeckers can easily be observed on a tree trunk. Usually, the bird sits on the trunk at the base of the tree and begins to jump up, making spiral turns around the trunk. Climbing up, she carefully examines every crack, every bump in the bark. If a bird notices something on thick branches, then it examines them as well, usually from below, hanging from the branch and again leaning on its tail. Having thus examined the trunk and large side branches to a height of 12-16 m, and sometimes even higher, the woodpecker flies to another tree. If, while examining a tree, a woodpecker finds insects living under the bark, it uses its beak: a measured and loud “knock-knock-knock” spreads far through the forest. With strong blows, the woodpecker breaks the bark or makes a funnel in it, exposing the passages of root insects, and with a sticky long tongue that easily penetrates into these passages, the bird extracts larvae and adult insects from under the bark. In autumn, the woodpecker's way of obtaining food and its composition change. A bird plucks a cone from a coniferous tree, clamps it into a natural or hollowed-out niche at the top of a shrunken tree trunk and strikes it with force with its beak. With blows of its beak, the woodpecker opens the scales of the cone, extracts and eats the seeds. Usually, a mountain of cones accumulates under such a woodpecker forge by the end of winter: 5000-7000 broken cones were found under separate forges. Every day, the woodpecker breaks up to 100 cones, and therefore, in order to provide itself with food in winter, each bird seizes an individual plot in the fall, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich, depending on the yield of coniferous seeds and the number of coniferous trees on the site, ranges from 5 to 15 hectares. On each of these sites there are several dozen forges. Birds protect their individual areas and do not allow other woodpeckers to enter them. In early spring, woodpeckers, along with seeds, again begin to eat insects that have emerged after wintering. And during the period of the beginning of sap flow in birches, the woodpecker often makes horizontal rows of holes in the bark with its beak on the trunks and on the branches of trees, and when the juice appears, it alternately applies its beak to each hole and drinks. Thus, in the diet of woodpeckers, there is a clearly pronounced seasonal change in food. In autumn and winter, woodpeckers feed on the seeds of coniferous trees, in spring and summer - animal food. The large spotted woodpecker eats ants in significant numbers: 300-500 insects were found in the stomachs of some dead birds. Quite often, woodpeckers eat various beetles, especially those living under the bark, bark beetles and barbels, as well as weevils, leaf beetles, etc. The large spotted woodpecker is a useful bird. By hollowing out hollows, which are not usually reused by the woodpeckers themselves, they thereby create a housing stock for many other very useful hollow-nesters (for example, tits and flycatchers), arranging nests in ready-made hollows. In addition, woodpeckers are able to extract and destroy such pests that are dangerous for the forest, such as xylophagous insects (bark beetles, barbels, etc.), which have no enemies among birds other than woodpeckers. The woodpecker hammers only trees infected with pests, and therefore the traces of this activity are signals indicating that the tree is affected and needs to be cut down. Eating the seeds of coniferous trees in winter, the great spotted woodpecker does not prevent the self-renewal of these species, since during the winter it eats only a few percent of the seed crop.

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker / Dendrocopos minor

The small spotted woodpecker is one of the smallest woodpeckers: it is only slightly larger than a sparrow in size. In plumage coloration, it is very similar to the great spotted woodpecker. With all its habits, it also resembles its larger relative, but, unlike the latter, the small spotted woodpecker is more common on lateral branches and thin branches of trees than on trunks. It is more mobile and does not linger on the same tree for more than one minute when searching for food.In winter, it often hammers the thin tops of young fir trees or picks out something in thin branches. It cannot crush cones with its weak beak. Its food consists exclusively of various root beetles - barbels, bark beetles and carpenter ants.

Small spotted woodpecker

During the nesting season, it is very secretive, but at other times it is quite noisy. The voice of this bird sounds like a frequently repeated mournful "ki-ki-ki-ki-ki ...". Its small, neatly made low above the ground in drying and decaying trunks of aspen or alder hollows are most willingly engaged in small insectivorous hollow-nesting birds. The small spotted woodpecker lives in deciduous and mixed forests in the north of Algeria, in Europe and on the adjacent islands, in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor and in western Iran, in Siberia (with the exception of the north of the taiga), reaching east to North Korea, Primorye, Sakhalin and Kamchatka.

Red woodpecker/ Micropternus brachyurus

The red woodpecker got its name because the main color of its plumage is reddish-brown. Wings and tail with black transverse stripes. The beak is dark brown, the legs are greyish brown. The eyes are brownish red. The coloration of different birds varies greatly: some individuals are red or rusty-red in color, while others are brown and dark chestnut. The thumb of this woodpecker is underdeveloped, and therefore its paws seem to be three-toed. This is a medium-sized woodpecker: the body length of the bird is about 25 cm. All plumage of red woodpeckers (especially the head, chest and tail) is smeared with some kind of sticky substance. This substance is nothing but the juices of ants crushed by woodpeckers.

red woodpecker

These insects, found in masses on trees where woodpeckers climb, are very aggressive, they cling to the plumage of a bird and try to bite. The woodpecker, on the other hand, crushes the ants by rubbing its hard plumage (especially the tail) against the unevenness of the bark; the ants are crushed, and their juices are smeared over the body of the bird. Therefore, the body of woodpeckers has a peculiar specific smell of formic acid. The constant neighborhood with ants, which crawl en masse along the branches and trunks of trees, where birds collect their food, leads to another interesting feature. The tail of these birds is almost always adorned with more or less heads of large red (or fire, as they are also called) ants. These ants, having grabbed something, no longer let their prey out of their jaws, and even if you tear off the head of this insect, it will still hold on to what it grabbed. When woodpeckers climb the trunks of mango trees, ants grab them by the tail feathers, die from the friction of the bird's tail against the roughness of the bark, but their heads still remain on the beards of the feathers. This woodpecker lives along the eastern slopes of the Himalayas, in Hindustan, Ceylon, Indochina and the southern provinces of China, inhabiting the valleys of lowland rivers and mountains up to an altitude of 2000 m above sea level. Here the red woodpecker keeps to the edges of the forest; often it can be found in tea gardens, in cultivated fields with rare bamboo trees, in banana plantations; however, it often settles in sparse areas of the forest, avoiding the impenetrable jungle. The breeding season for this woodpecker lasts from February to June. The nests of these birds are wonderful - woodpeckers do not build them themselves, they nest in anthills! Large tree ants of the genus Crematogaster, fire ants of the jungle, live in Indochina. These ants arrange their nests in the crowns of trees at a height of 2 to 20 m from the ground. Outside, the ant nest is a mass of gray-brown color, most of all resembling felt, cardboard or papier-mâché, but usually characterized by great strength and hardness. In the wall of this structure, the red woodpecker makes a rounded hole about 5 cm in diameter. This hole leads to an internal cavity in which the female lays her eggs. For the construction of this “nest in a nest”, woodpeckers, oddly enough, always choose the largest and always populated anthills! And it is completely incomprehensible why large, terrible for all living ants do not touch either eggs, or chicks, or the incubating female herself! But the incubating female feeds on ant pupae, which she easily pecks without rising from the eggs. The clutch of this woodpecker usually consists of 3 eggs. They are white in color, and their shell is thin and transparent. However, after some time, from contact with formic acid secreted by insects, the shell darkens and the eggs become brownish. Red woodpeckers feed on various types of ants, which they collect en masse on the trunks and branches of trees, as well as on the ground, where they often descend in search of food. But most often and in large numbers they eat ants of the genus Crematogaster. In early spring, these woodpeckers often visit banana plantations. Here, on the trunks of banana palms, birds make holes with their beaks and drink sweet juice.

Three-toed Woodpecker / Picoides tridactylus

The three-toed woodpecker is a beautiful, colorful bird. Her back is white with wide black streaks, her uppertail is brownish black, her tail is black with transverse white stripes along the edges of its top. The wings are brownish-black with white streaks. The forehead, nape and back of the neck are black with white streaks on the forehead and nape, the sides of the head and neck are white. From the eye back, going down the side of the neck, there is a wide black stripe; the same black stripe goes from the base of the lower jaw along the sides of the throat and goiter and breaks up on the sides of the chest into large longitudinal black spots.The male has a yellow crown, the female has a gray one. A characteristic feature of these birds is the absence of their first toe - they are three-toed: two fingers point forward and one back.

three-toed woodpecker

This is a medium-sized woodpecker: the wing length is 12-13 cm. Three-toed woodpeckers are common in Central and Eastern Europe (except for the southern regions), in Siberia (reaching north to the Arctic Circle, and east to North Korea, Primorye, Sakhalin and Kamchatka), and also in most of North America (absent only in the far north and southeastern United States). They inhabit vast and dense forests of the northern type (mainly coniferous), and in the south they keep in mountain forests. This woodpecker starts breeding early: even at the northern borders of its distribution, already in February, the drum roll of a male recklessly tapping his beak on a dry branch is often heard. Males continue to drum throughout the spring - until the end of May. During this period, three-toed woodpeckers are very lively, they chirp and often cry out. Hollows are arranged most often in larches, often in spruces. Usually the male and female gouge out a hollow in rotting, dried up or scorched trees and even in stumps, but often in intact trees. More often, such a hollow is located low from the ground: at a height of 1-6 m, where 3-6 white eggs are laid. In June, still poorly flying young birds can be found in most of the range. After leaving the nest, the whole family first roams together in the forest, then the brood breaks up. In winter, migrations reach a large scale, and at this time most birds move far to the south of their nesting sites. This woodpecker feeds on wood insects, and in autumn also seeds and berries. The three-toed woodpecker obtains its food almost exclusively with the help of chiseling, and catches open-living insects only during the feeding of chicks. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the stomachs of these birds, larvae, pupae, and adult beetles are always found in large numbers living under the bark of trees, primarily larvae of bark beetles and barbels, as well as larvae of goldfish, weevils, horntails, etc. This bird is very voracious: for an incomplete winter day, one three-toed woodpecker can tear off the bark from a large spruce infected with bark beetles with blows of its beak. And according to rough estimates, it is known that there are about 10,000 bark beetle larvae on such a spruce! Even if the woodpecker does not find and eat all the bark beetles, they will die from winter frosts, falling on the snow with broken bark. The three-toed woodpecker is one of the most useful birds of the coniferous forest.

Imagine that during the day you hit your head on a tree 12,000 times. At the end of the day, your head would no doubt be in pain, but woodpeckers do this every day. Woodpeckers that live solitary in the forest can be identified by the characteristic undulations of their flight: three or four quick beats of their wings raise them up and then lower them down.

There are about 200 species of woodpeckers. These birds have a very wide range of habitats, but they mostly live in wooded areas. Dimensions different types Woodpeckers range from 15 to 53 cm.

Due to the huge energy consumption woodpecker is constantly hungry. For example, black woodpecker(originally from North America) in one sitting can eat 900 beetle larvae or 1000 ants; green woodpecker eats up to 2000 ants a day. This truly "wolfish appetite" has a purpose: woodpeckers play an important role in controlling insects, helping to limit the spread of tree diseases by destroying disease vectors. Thus, the woodpecker bird helps to conserve forests.

No other bird is capable of such a woodpecker

The woodpecker is able to strike a tree at a rate of 20–25 times per second(which is almost twice the speed of a machine gun) 8000-12000 times a day!

The woodpecker is able to hit a tree at a speed of 20-25 times per second (which is almost twice the speed of a machine gun) 8000-12000 times a day!

When this bird strikes a tree, it uses incredible force. If the same force were applied to the skull of any other bird, its brain would quickly turn into mush. Moreover, if a person hit his head against a tree with the same force, he, if he survived after such a concussion, would receive a very serious brain injury. However, a number of physiological features of the structure of the woodpecker prevent all these tragedies. How do they provide the bird with such reliable protection?

In a recent study, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley found four shock-absorbing benefits of woodpeckers:

“Hard but elastic beak; sinewy springy structure (hyoid, or hyoid bone), which covers the entire skull and supports; spongy bone area in the head; way of interaction of the skull and cerebrospinal fluid, suppressing vibration.

The woodpecker's shock absorption system is not based on any one factor, but is the result of the combined action of several interdependent structures.

A woodpecker is a bird that has a real shock absorber in its head.

When woodpecker drums on a tree at a speed of up to 22 times per second, his head experiences overloads reaching 1000 g (a person would be in a “knockout” already at 80–100 g). How do woodpeckers manage to withstand such pressure? David Youhanz writes:

“Each time a woodpecker hits a tree, the woodpecker's head experiences a stress equal to 1,000 gravitational forces. This is more than 250 times the stress experienced by an astronaut during a rocket launch... In most birds, the bones of the beak are connected to the bones of the skull - the bone that surrounds the brain. But in woodpeckers, the skull and beak are separated from each other by a tissue similar to a sponge. It is this "cushion" that takes the brunt of every time the woodpecker's beak pierces the tree. The woodpecker shock absorber works so well that, according to scientists, man has not yet come up with anything better.

In addition, both the beak and the brain of the woodpecker are surrounded by a special pillow that softens the blows.

The woodpecker shock absorber works so well that, according to scientists, man has not yet come up with anything better.

In a perfectly straight line

During "drilling work", the woodpecker's head moves at more than twice the speed of the bullet when fired. At that speed, any blow delivered at even a slight angle would simply tear the bird's brain apart. However, the woodpecker's neck muscles are so well coordinated that its head and beak move synchronously in a perfectly straight line. Moreover, the blow is absorbed by special muscles of the head, which pull the woodpecker's skull away from the beak. every time when he hits.

Woodpecker has the most unusual language in the world

After the woodpecker removes the bark from the tree, drills a hole in it and finds the passages of insects, he uses his long tongue to get insects and larvae from the depths. Its tongue is able to lengthen five times, and it is so thin that it even goes into ant passages. The tongue is equipped with nerve endings that determine the type of prey, and glands that secrete a sticky substance, thanks to which insects stick to it like flies to sticky tape.

While the tongue of most birds is attached to the back of the beak and is in the mouth, the woodpecker's tongue does not grow from the mouth, but from the right nostril! As it exits the right nostril, the tongue splits into two halves. cover the entire head and neck and exit through a hole in the beak, where they reconnect (See Fig. 1). Simply amazing! Thus, when a woodpecker is flying and not using its tongue, it is stored curled up in the nostril and under the skin behind the neck!

Evolutionists believe that woodpecker descended from other birds with a normal tongue that came out of the beak. If the woodpecker's tongue were only formed by random mutations, they would first have to move the woodpecker's tongue into his right nostril and guide him backwards, but after that he would starve to death! A scenario of stepwise evolution (through mutations and natural selection) could never have created a woodpecker's tongue, since turning the tongue backwards would not provide the bird with any advantage - the language would be completely useless until until it has made a complete circle around the head, returning to the base of the beak.

The unique design of the woodpecker's tongue clearly indicates that it is the result of intelligent design.

Leaving the right nostril, the tongue is divided into two halves, which cover the entire head with the neck and exit through the hole in the beak, where they rejoin. A stepwise evolution scenario could never create a woodpecker's tongue, since turning the tongue backwards would be useless until it completes a full circle around the head, returning to the base of the beak.

The woodpecker has a real chisel beak

It has an extremely strong beak that most other birds do not have. Its beak is strong enough to enter with force into a tree and at the same time not fold like an accordion. After all, a woodpecker knocks on wood with it at a speed of about 1000 beats per minute (almost twice the speed of a combat machine), and its speed at the moment of impact is up to 2000 km per hour.

The speed of a woodpecker's beak at the moment of impact of a tree reaches 2000 km per hour.

The tip of the woodpecker's beak is shaped like a chisel, and like a chisel, it is able to penetrate the hardest wood. However, unlike a construction tool, it never needs to be sharpened!

X-paws

Two fingers on the woodpecker's foot point forward, and two back. It is this structure that helps it easily move up, down and around tree trunks (most birds have three fingers pointing forward and one back). In addition, the suspension system, which includes the tendons and muscles of the legs, sharp claws and stiff tail feathers, on the tips of which there are spikes for support, allows the woodpecker to absorb the force of lightning-fast repeated blows.

woodpecker eyes

When a woodpecker knocks on a tree at speeds up to 20 times per second, its eyelids close each time a moment before its beak approaches its target. This is a kind of eye protection mechanism from chips. Closed eyelids also hold the eyes and prevent them from flying out.

Woodpecker evolved?

Woodpecker design is an absolutely insoluble problem for those who believe in evolution. How could a system of special shock absorbers evolve step by step in woodpeckers? If it had not been at the very beginning, all the woodpeckers would have already taken out their brains long ago. And if there was ever a time when woodpeckers didn't need to drill holes in trees, they wouldn't need shock absorbers.

Suppose a woodpecker has a long tongue attached to the right nostril, but it is completely missing a strong beak, neck muscles, shock absorbers, etc. How would a woodpecker use its long tongue if it had no other auxiliary apparatus? On the other hand, suppose that the bird has all the tools necessary for drilling holes in the tree, but does not have a long tongue. He would make holes in the tree, looking forward to a delicious meal, but he would not be able to get the insects. The whole point is that in nothing can work in an irreducibly complex system if everything does not work.

For those who believe in the evolution of the woodpecker, the fossil record presents another major problem. There are practically no fossil woodpeckers in the chronicle, so it is impossible to trace the supposed gradual development of woodpeckers from simple birds in it.

Conclusion

From the very beginning, the woodpecker had to have such a unique structure in order to survive in its dizzying pace of life. This indicates only one thing: God created a woodpecker with unique characteristics as the book of Genesis tells us. Like all other living organisms, woodpeckers are strong evidence of the existence of a heavenly Creator!

Links and notes

Woodpecker head inspires shock absorber designers

Perhaps in the future, experts investigating the causes of the aircraft crash and deciphering the black box data will more than once remember the golden-fronted woodpecker (Melanerpes aurifons) with a kind word. Why? It's all about the shock absorber, which was created by scientists inspired by the ability of woodpeckers to withstand sudden braking.

The researchers decided to find artificial analogues in order to create a mechanical damping system that would protect microelectronics that are subjected to high power loads. To simulate the resistance to deformation of the woodpecker's beak, they used a metal shock absorber in the form of a cylinder. The ability of the hyoid to distribute mechanical loads was imitated by a layer of rubber embedded in the cylinder. The function of the skull and cerebrospinal fluid was performed by a layer of aluminum. Vibration resistance of cancellous bone was reproduced using tightly packed glass hollow balls with a diameter of 1 mm.

To test their system, the scientists placed it in a bullet and fired a gas gun at a thick aluminum wall. And what did they find? Their system protected the electronics inside the capsule from impacts up to 60,000 g. Modern black boxes are capable of withstanding shocks of no more than 1000 g.

In addition to a possible role in protecting the electronics of black boxes, such an absorber could be useful in the creation of concrete-piercing bombs, as well as a shield for spacecraft from collisions with micrometeorites and space debris. It can also be used to protect electronics in cars and to create protective equipment for motorcyclists.

Marx P. Woodpecker's head inspires shock absorbers // New Scientist. Posted on newscientist.com February 4, 2011, accessed February 11, 2011.