As a collective term, woodpeckers are one among the better-known families of birds. The general idea is evident enough: medium-sized, black and white birds with red accents hitting trees with their beaks. Some moderately observant backyard birders could also be accustomed to the common native birds that largely fit this description, similar to the acorn, downy, or Nuttall's woodpecker. Today, nevertheless, I would like to shine a lightweight on three of our more rarely encountered woodpeckers, each with their very own surprises: the sapsucker, the ciliate woodpecker, and the mighty pileated woodpecker.
I discussed the classic pattern of our woodpeckers: black and white, not too big and possibly with a bit red on the top. The first of our “special” woodpeckers is the Red-breasted Sapsucker, which matches these patterns in size and color. As the name suggests, this particular sapsucker has a more pronounced red coloration than average, with the whole head and upper chest streaked with a wealthy red in each female and male birds. (In all of our other native woodpeckers, red is merely a highlight, present in a limited area on the crown of the top, and in some species it is totally absent from females.)
There are a couple of special features that you must listen to with red-necked suckers. First, they’re the one one among our reasonably common woodpeckers that’s fully migratory in its Bay Area population: sapsuckers arrive now, stay all winter, after which depart around April to breeding grounds within the Sierras and Pacific Northwest. The key to becoming aware of their presence – and their truly attention-grabbing feature – lies in the opposite a part of their name, the “sap sucking” itself. Have you ever noticed neat rows of circular holes dug into the bark of living trees? These were made by this bird, which excavates these initial incisions after which returns to those “wells” to feed on the sap that flows into the exposed cavities, in addition to any random insects which can be interested in the sweet substance.
The second of our unique woodpeckers we're talking about is the least typical in appearance: the northern woodpecker. This bird is just not black and white, but a kind of coppery brown with black stripes on the back, a semicircular black bib on the highest of the chest, a predominantly gray face and a red whisker patch (it’s absent in females). It is a big and striking bird, whose most striking feature is basically hidden, but can also be clearly visible in its name: in flight, its wings “flicker” with a superb, reddish-orange glow.
This unusual color combination is the superficial manifestation of the deeper unusualness of the glint. Speedsters are unusually brown because they spend an unusual period of time on the bottom. They probably developed their different color scheme in parallel with their evolution as ground-feeding woodpeckers. While many other woodpeckers seek for prey insects in rotting wood or pluck them from the surface of the bark, woodpeckers concentrate on hunting ants, often reaching into their tunnels with their flamboyant tongues, which extend about 2 1/2 inches beyond the top of theirs long beaks.
Woodpeckers are strange and striking creatures, and these three representatives are even stranger. You dig wells for the sap, you stick a snaking tongue into the earth like a winged anteater, and also you spread your mighty wings and trumpets through the forest as if the prehistoric past had develop into present and alive.
Originally published:
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