Many woodpecker species exhibit patches of red and yellow on their heads and bellies, and these bright areas play a role in signaling.

Unlike other birds woodpeckers have long prehensile tongues with barbed or sticky tips which can probe ants' nests or tunnels made by boring insects.īlack, white, and various shades of gray and brown dominate the colors most commonly found in woodpecker plumage, with green also being seen on some species outside North America. Their strong feet and stiff tail allow them to form a 'tripod' which is a very stable stance. The basic body of the woodpecker is comprised of a chisel-like bill used to peel bark or evacuate wood to access insects, and a stiff tail used to prop the bird as it clings to vertical surfaces such as trees or posts. Woodpeckers are known mainly for their pecking and drumming on trees and posts, sapsuckers for their feeding on both tree sap as well as the insects they find caught in it, and flickers for being rather large and commonly hunting for ants on the ground. The most well known of these are commonly grouped under the names woodpeckers, sapsuckers, and flickers. The woodpecker family, Picidae (pronounced PIH-kih-dee) is made up of two hundred twenty-two species grouped into twenty-eight genera.įifty-seven species of woodpeckers, grouped into fourteen genera, are found in North America. The taxonomic order PICIFORMES (pronounced pih-kih-FOR-meez) is divided into seven different families which include the colorful toucans, the insect-catching jacamars, puffbirds, honeyguides, barbets, and woodpeckers.

Ivory billed woodpecker