Hi Everybody!!
The big Sun finally came out yesterday after days of gloomy clouds. Around here, everybody came out to bask in the Sun and have a dry meal. Out of the silence came a Rat A Tat Tat followed by more. The loud hammering sound let me know it was a big Pileated Woodpecker in top of a tree. These birds are easy to find as you just follow the hammering sound and bits of wood falling out of a tree! I caught a glimpse of the red bellied woodpecker also. Pics of both are below with the links to the photostudies in my G+ Albums. I have also shared info from Wikipedia on Woodpeckers.
Don't Forget to start your new Birding List for this year. List the birds you see and a count if you want. I now have two woodpeckers: the pileated and the red bellied woodpecker. Enjoy!

Study 1: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117645114459863049265/albums/5968032143762743425

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodpecker

Woodpecker

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The woodpeckers, piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers are a family, Picidae, of near-passerine birds. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. Most species live inforests or woodland habitats, although a few species are known to live in treeless areas, such as rocky hillsides and deserts.

The Picidae are just one of the eight living families in the order Piciformes. Members of the order Piciformes, such as the jacamars, puffbirds, barbets, toucans, and honeyguides, have traditionally been thought to be very closely related to the woodpeckers, piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. More recently, DNA sequence analyses have confirmed this view.^[1]

There are about 200 species and about 30 genera in this family. Many species are threatened or endangered due to loss of habitat or habitat fragmentation. Two species of woodpeckers, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the Imperial Woodpecker, have been considered extinct for about 30 years (there has been some controversy recently whether these species still exist).^[2]

Woodpeckers, piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers

Hispaniolan Woodpecker Tapping sound of a woodpecker (help·info)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Subclass:	Neornithes
Infraclass:	Neognathae
Superorder:	Neoaves
Order:	Piciformes
Suborder:	Pici
Family:	Picidae Vigors, 1825

General characteristics[edit]

The stiffened tails of woodpeckers are crucial for their climbing and foraging techniques. The tail is used as a prop. Here a Black-rumped Flameback rests while foraging using its tail for support.

The smallest woodpecker is the Bar-breasted Piculet, at 7 g and 8 cm (3¼ inches). The largest woodpecker was the Imperial Woodpecker, at an average of 58 cm (23 inches) and probably over 600 g (1.3 lb). The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is (or was) slightly smaller at 50 cm (20 inches) and a weight of 500 g (1.1 lb). If both the Ivory-billed and Imperial Woodpeckers are indeed extinct, the largest extant woodpecker is the Great Slaty Woodpecker of Southeast Asia, at about 50 cm (20 inches) and 450 g (1 lb). A number of species exhibit sexual dimorphism in size, bill length and weight. In the piculets it is often the females that are larger, while amongst the woodpeckers that show sexual dimorphism it is usually the males that are larger.

Most species possess predominantly white, black, brown, green, and red plumage, although many piculets show a certain amount of grey and olive green. In woodpeckers, many species exhibit patches of red and yellow on their heads and bellies, and these bright areas are important in signaling. The dark areas of plumage are often iridescent. Although the sexes of Picidae species tend to look alike, many woodpecker species have more prominent red or yellow head markings in males than in females.

Members of the family Picidae have strong bills for drilling and drumming on trees and long sticky tongues for extracting food.^[3]Woodpecker bills are typically longer, sharper and stronger than the bills of piculets and wrynecks; however their morphology is very similar. The bill's chisel-like tip is kept sharp by the pecking action in birds that regularly use it on wood. Species of woodpecker and flicker that use their bills in soil or for probing as opposed to regular hammering tend to have longer and more decurved bills. Due to their smaller bill size, many piculets and wrynecks will forage in decaying wood more often than woodpeckers. The long sticky tongues, which possess bristles, aid these birds in grabbing and extracting insects deep within a hole of a tree. It had been reported that the tongue was used to spear grubs, but more detailed studies published in 2004 have shown that the tongue instead wraps around the prey before being pulled out.^[4]

Many of the foraging, breeding and signaling behaviors of woodpeckers involve drumming and hammering using the bill.^[5] To preventbrain damage from the rapid and repeated impacts, woodpeckers have evolved a number of adaptations to protect the brain. These include small brain size, the orientation of the brain within the skull (which maximises the area of contact between the brain and the skull) and the short duration of contact. The millisecond before contact with wood a thickened nictitating membrane closes, protecting the eye from flying debris.^[6] The nostrils are also protected; they are often slit-like and have special feathers to cover them.

Woodpeckers, piculets and wrynecks all possess zygodactyl feet. Zygodactyl feet consist of four toes, the first (hallux) and the fourth facing backward and the second and third facing forward. This foot arrangement is good for grasping the limbs and trunks of trees. Members of this family can walk vertically up a tree trunk, which is beneficial for activities such as foraging for food or nest excavation. In addition to the strong claws and feet, woodpeckers have short strong legs. This is typical of birds that regularly forage on trunks. The tails of all woodpeckers except the piculets and wrynecks are stiffened, and when the bird perches on vertical surfaces, the tail and feet work together to support it.^[3]

Distribution, habitat and movements[edit]

Use of cacti for breeding and roosting holes allows some woodpeckers, like this Ladder-backed Woodpecker, to live in otherwise treeless deserts

See also: List of Piciformes by population

The woodpeckers have a mostly cosmopolitan distribution, although they are absent fromAustralasia, Madagascar, and Antarctica. They are also absent from the world's oceanic islands, although many insular species are found on continental islands. The true woodpeckers, subfamilyPicinae, are distributed across the entire range of the woodpeckers. The Picumninae piculets have a pantropical distribution, with species in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Neotropics, with South America holding the majority of piculet species. The second piculet subfamily, Nesoctitinae, has a single species, the Antillean Piculet, which is restricted to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Thewrynecks (Jynginae) have an exclusively Old World distribution, with the two species occurring inEurope, Asia, and Africa.

Overall, the woodpeckers are arboreal birds of wooded habitats. They reach their greatest diversityin tropical rainforests, but occur in almost all suitable habitats including woodlands, savannahs,scrublands, bamboo forests. Even grasslands and deserts have been colonised by various species. These habitats are more easily occupied where a small number of trees exist, or, in the case of desert species like the Gila Woodpecker, tall cacti are available for nesting in.^[7] A number of species are adapted to spending a portion of their time feeding on the ground, and a very small minority of species have abandoned trees entirely and nest in holes in the ground. The Ground Woodpecker is one such species, inhabiting the rocky and grassy hills of South Africa

Picidae species can either be sedentary or migratory. Many species are known to stay in the same area year-round, while others travel great distances from their breeding grounds to their wintering grounds. For example, theEurasian Wryneck breeds in Europe and west Asia and migrates to the Sahel in Africa in the winter.^[8]

Results from the monitoring programs of the Swiss Ornithological Institute show that the breeding populations of several forest species for which deadwood is an important habitat element (Black Woodpecker, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Middle Spotted Woodpecker, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, European Green Woodpecker, Eurasian Three-toed Woodpecker as well as European Crested Tit, Willow Tit and Eurasian Treecreeper) have increased in the period 1990 to 2008, although not to the same extent in all species. At the same time, the White-backed Woodpecker extended its range in eastern Switzerland. The Swiss National Forest Inventory shows an increase in the amount of deadwood in forests for the same period. For all the mentioned species, with the exception of green and middle spotted woodpecker, the growing availability of deadwood is likely to be the most important factor explaining this population increase.

Behavior[edit]

	Woodpecker MENU 0:00 A woodpecker pecking into a tree
Problems playing this file? See media help.

The woodpeckers range from highly antisocial solitary species that are aggressive to other members of their species, to species that live in groups. Group-living species tend to be communal group breeders. In addition to these species, a number of species may join mixed-species feeding flockswith other insectivorous birds, although they tend to stay at the edges of these groups. Joining these flocks allows woodpeckers to decrease anti-predator vigilance and increase their feeding rate.^[9] Woodpeckers are diurnal, roosting at night inside holes. In most species the roost will become the nest during the breeding season.

Diet and feeding[edit]

Holes bored by woodpeckers feeding, Gatineau Park, Quebec

A male Black Woodpecker attending its chicks

The diet of woodpeckers consists mainly of insects and their grubs taken from living and dead trees, and other arthropods, along with fruit, nuts and sap from live trees. Ecologically, they help to keep trees healthy by keeping them from suffering mass infestations. The family is noted for its ability to acquire wood-boring grubs using their bills for hammering, but overall the family is characterized by its dietary flexibility, with many species being both highly omnivorous and opportunistic. The insect prey most commonly taken are those found inside tree trunks, whether they are alive or rotten, and in crevices in the bark. These include beetles and their grubs, ants, termites, spiders, and caterpillars. These may be obtained either by gleaning or, more famously, by excavating wood. Having hammered a hole into the wood, the prey is excavated by a long barbed tongue. The ability to excavate allows woodpeckers to obtain tree sap, an important source of food for some species. Most famously, the sapsuckers (genus Sphyrapicus) feed in this fashion, but the technique is not restricted to these and others, such as theAcorn Woodpecker and White-headed Woodpecker, also feed in this way. It was once thought that the technique was restricted to the New World, but Old World species, such as the Arabian Woodpecker and Great Spotted Woodpecker, also feed in this way.^[3]

Breeding[edit]

All members of the family Picidae nest in cavities. Almost every species nests in tree cavities, although, in deserts, some species nest inside holes in cactus and a few species nest in holes dug into the earth. Woodpeckers and piculets will excavate their own nests, but wrynecks will not. The excavated nest is usually only lined from the wood chips produced as the hole was made. Many species of woodpeckers excavate one hole per breeding season, sometimes after multiple attempts. It takes around a month to finish the job. Abandoned holes are used by other birds and mammals that are secondary cavity nesters.^[10] Because nesting holes are in great demand by other cavity nesters, woodpeckers face competition for the nesting sites they excavate from the moment the hole becomes usable. This may come from other species of woodpecker, or other cavity nesting birds like swallows and starlings. Woodpeckers may aggressively harass potential competitors, and also use other strategies to reduce the chance of being usurped from their nesting site; for example the Red-crowned Woodpecker digs its nest in the underside of a small branch, which reduces the chance that a larger species will take it over and expand it.^[11]

Members of Picidae are typically monogamous, with a few species breeding cooperatively and some polygamy reported in a few species.^[12] Polyandry, where a female raises two broods with two separate males, has also been reported in the West Indian Woodpecker.^[13] A pair will work together to help build the nest, incubate the eggs and raise their altricial young. However, in most species the male does most of the nest excavation and takes the night shift while incubating the eggs. A nest will usually consist of 2–5 round white eggs. Since these birds are cavity nesters, their eggs do not need to be camouflaged and the white color helps the parents to see them in dim light. The eggs are incubated for about 11–14 days before the chicks are born. It takes about 18–30 days before the young are ready to leave the nest.

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