50 Fun Facts About Woodpecker

Woodpeckers belong to which bird family?

The family also includes the piculets, wrynecks and sapsuckers; Sittidae are the nuthatches and Ramphastidae the toucans.

Woodpeckers are found on every inhabited continent except which one?

They are also missing from New Guinea, New Zealand and Madagascar, so a whole slice of the Southern Hemisphere has no native woodpecker at all.

Roughly how many woodpecker species are there worldwide?

They are spread over 35 genera, from thumb-sized piculets to birds the size of a crow.

Which desert species specialises in living among cacti rather than trees?

Gila and gilded flickers carve nest holes in tall saguaros of the Sonoran Desert; the holes later house owls, flycatchers and even bats.

What is the smallest known woodpecker, at about 7.5 cm long?

The piculets are tiny tropical woodpeckers; this one weighs under 9 grams, lighter than two US quarters.

Which Southeast Asian species is the largest member of the family that is definitely still alive?

This Southeast Asian giant reaches 55 cm; the ivory-billed and imperial woodpeckers were bigger but are generally considered extinct.

What is the term for the woodpecker foot arrangement of two toes forward and two back?

Parrots and cuckoos share the layout; it turns the foot into a clamp for gripping vertical bark.

How many toes does the black-backed woodpecker have on each foot?

Losing the inner hind toe is thought to let them lean back and deliver a harder blow.

Besides its feet, what does a woodpecker brace against the trunk to hold itself upright?

The piculets and wrynecks lack the stiff tail feathers, which is one reason they perch across branches like ordinary birds.

Which woodpecker structure is so long it winds around the outside of the skull, cushioning the brain?

It splits in two, passes either side of the spine, loops over the braincase and finally ends in the right nostril.

A 2004 study showed the woodpecker's tongue does what to a grub instead of spearing it?

The tongue is barbed and sticky, so once it curls around a larva the prey slides out with it.

Simulations found what share of a woodpecker's pecking energy is stored as strain in the body, not the brain?

The skull's spongy bone and the beak's layered structure spread the shock across the whole bird.

Why do woodpeckers tend to peck in short bursts with brief pauses?

The rests give the head time to cool before the next drum roll.

What closes over a woodpecker's eye in the millisecond before its beak hits the wood?

The membrane keeps out flying splinters and also stops the retina from tearing under the deceleration.

Roughly what deceleration does a woodpecker's head endure with each strike?

That is many times the force that would concuss a human, delivered up to 20 times a second.

Woodpecker skulls have inspired the design of protective helmets and which other piece of engineering?

Engineers copied the spongy bone and flexible beak to protect fragile recorders from crash impacts.

In woodpeckers, drumming on a resonant surface is the equivalent of what in songbirds?

It is mainly a territorial signal, and the number of beats and cadence of the roll are unique to each species.

What colour are woodpecker eggs?

Cavity eggs need no camouflage, and white shells are easier for the parents to see in the dark.

In most woodpecker species, which parent takes the night shift incubating the eggs?

The male also does most of the digging; the pair shares daytime incubation and chick feeding.

Which member of the woodpecker family does NOT dig its own nest hole?

The wrynecks (genus Jynx) have weak bills and must find ready-made cavities, often old woodpecker holes or nest boxes; Picumnus is the piculets, Sphyrapicus the sapsuckers and Colaptes the flickers.

Woodpeckers can remove up to what share of emerald ash borer larvae from an infested ash tree?

That makes them one of the few natural checks on the beetle that has killed tens of millions of North American ash trees.

In a Roman legend, a woodpecker brought food to which abandoned children?

The bird was sacred to Mars alongside the she-wolf, and the mythical King Picus was himself turned into a woodpecker.

Which critically endangered species survives as a few hundred birds on one Japanese island?

Its forest is squeezed by dams, roads, golf courses and helipads.

The pileated woodpecker is famous for chipping holes of what shape into trees?

The big oblong excavations expose carpenter-ant galleries and are a giveaway that a pileated is around.

The pileated woodpecker is North America's largest living woodpecker; where does it rank worldwide?

Only two Asian and Eurasian giants are bigger among species known to survive.

The pileated woodpecker's favourite food is which insect?

It also takes wood-boring beetle larvae, and in winter adds fruit and nuts.

Which ivory-billed woodpecker nickname supposedly came from what people exclaimed on seeing it?

Other folk names included Log Cock, Kent (after its toy-trumpet call) and Poule de Bois in Cajun French.

In what year was the last universally accepted US sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker?

Audubon artist Don Eckelberry saw it on Louisiana's Singer Tract just as the last of the old-growth forest was being logged.

A disputed 2004 ivory-billed woodpecker sighting triggered a huge Cornell search in which state?

The blurry Luneau video from the Cache River refuge was accepted by the Fish and Wildlife Service but is still argued over.

In September 2021 the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed doing what with the ivory-billed woodpecker?

After public comment the agency paused in 2023 and said it would keep reviewing evidence before a final ruling.

If it still exists, the world's largest woodpecker is endemic to which country?

The imperial woodpecker of the Sierra Madre Occidental reached 60 cm; the only film of one was shot in 1956.

The last confirmed sighting of the imperial woodpecker was in which decade?

The Cornell Lab later released the 1956 Durango footage, the only moving images of the species ever taken.

Acorn woodpeckers store acorns in trees riddled with holes; what are these trees called?

A single granary can hold thousands of holes and is defended by the whole family against jays.

Acorn woodpeckers live in family groups of up to how many birds?

Groups can include several breeding males, several egg-laying females and helpers from previous years, an arrangement called polygynandry.

The acorn woodpecker's species name formicivorus means it eats what?

Swainson named it from a Mexican specimen in 1827; acorns matter most in winter but insects dominate the summer diet.

Which is the smallest of North America's woodpeckers?

It is a near-twin of the larger hairy woodpecker, but the resemblance is convergent evolution rather than close kinship.

Where does the northern flicker famously look for its food, unlike almost every other woodpecker?

It hammers into ant hills the way other woodpeckers hammer wood; ants can be 45% of its diet.

The northern flicker, nicknamed the yellowhammer, is the state bird of which US state?

The nickname was first applied to Confederate soldiers from that state during the Civil War.

Flickers rub insects on their feathers to use formic acid against parasites. What is this called?

Over 100 folk names exist for the flicker, from clape and gaffer woodpecker to wake-up and yarrup.

The great spotted woodpecker recolonised which island in the 2000s after vanishing in the 1600s?

DNA shows the colonists came from Britain, with the first proven nest in County Down in 2007.

In which year was woodpecker drumming proved to be purely mechanical rather than vocal?

The great spotted woodpecker drums at 10 to 16 strikes per second, faster than any other woodpecker in its range.

The red-cockaded woodpecker is the only woodpecker that digs its cavities exclusively in what?

A cavity in a longleaf pine takes an average of 4.4 years to finish, and the birds keep resin wells around it to deter snakes.

Which member of the family gets its English name from its ability to turn its head almost 180 degrees?

Combined with hissing, the snake-like twisting is a threat display, and the genus name Jynx gave English the word jinx.

Which invasive bird out-competes the red-headed woodpecker for nest cavities?

The species had dropped by around 65% over 40 years by 2004 before recovering to Least Concern in 2018.

Who was the first voice of Woody Woodpecker, before leaving to work exclusively for Warner Bros.?

He recorded only the first three cartoons, though his laugh was reused in the shorts until 1951 and he sang the theme song for Capitol Records.

Woody Woodpecker made his debut in November 1940 in a short starring which other Walter Lantz character?

The cartoon was Knock Knock, and the pesky bird stole the show from the pandas so completely that Lantz made him a star.

Woody Woodpecker is the official mascot of which studio and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?

His shorts ran in cinemas from 1940 to 1972, and the 1948 Woody Woodpecker Song was Oscar-nominated for Best Original Song.

Woodpeckers belong to which bird order, alongside toucans, barbets and honeyguides?

Picidae is one of nine living families in the order; woodpeckers, barbets, toucans and honeyguides together form the clade Pici.

The Eurasian wryneck, a migratory member of the woodpecker family, winters in which African region?

Most woodpeckers are sedentary; the wryneck's musical song on arrival is treated in some areas as a harbinger of spring.

How many eggs does a woodpecker clutch usually contain?

The eggs are round and white, and chicks need about 18-30 days before they are fully fledged and ready to leave the nest.