They nest in hollows, in burrows, in anthills, in termite mounds. As a rule, without bedding, whirligigs have a small bedding of plants, while toucans have a small bedding of regurgitated seeds. From 2 to 12 white eggs. The chicks are born blind, and in most species they are naked. Sexual maturity for many is at next year. The birds are small and medium-sized, weighing from 6 to 300 grams.
383 species in forests all over the world, except Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Polynesia. Woodpeckers, whose beak works like an excellent jackhammer, obviously require a special structure of the skull to prevent concussion: a number of special transformations in the bones and muscles of the skull, the details of which we will not go into, provide the necessary shock absorption.
The whirligig, having filled its beak full with ant eggs, brought them to the chicks.
The tongue of woodpeckers, like a long thin snake, dashingly “crawls” into all the nooks and crannies of the tree that have been hollowed out and eaten by bark beetles. It is sticky, has a spiked end and is very long; a green woodpecker, for example, is able to stick it out of its mouth 10 centimeters. In order for such an insect-catching device to fit in the throat, the evolution that created the woodpecker had to remove the tendonous base of the tongue from the oral cavity and wrap it in a loop around the skull!
Woodpeckers use their strong beak to extract insects from strong wood or seeds from cones, and to punch holes in the bark of birch trees (in spring, woodpeckers like to drink Birch juice), for arranging apartments in the form of a hollow carved into a tree. This labor-intensive work usually takes no more than two weeks. Drumming with their beaks on a dry trunk or branch, woodpeckers tap and serenade their girlfriends, inviting them to unite in legal marriage.
A Great Spotted Woodpecker feeds its babies.
These drum trills are an essential and enchanting accompaniment to the spring sounds and chants that fill the forest. Each woodpecker knocks in its own rhythm, and the tree vibrates under its blows in each species in a special frequency range. By slightly varying the intervals between beats, the duration of the drum trill and other “orchestration” of this “music,” woodpeckers can tell their partner and rival a lot about their intentions. Experts, analyzing the drumming of woodpeckers, can decide without error: a woodpecker is drumming on its own territory or is claiming someone else’s, is calling a friend, or they have already connected and the woodpecker invites her to fly after him to show the place chosen for the nest.
The black woodpecker, or woodpecker, has the longest trill - 2-3 seconds. There are about 40 beats in quick succession, which are easy to count by slowly playing the tape recording. It is also the lowest frequency - 1-1.5 kilohertz. The Great Spotted Woodpecker has a short trill, 12-16 beats in 0.6 seconds, and sounds more high tones, about 4 kilohertz. The drum “song” of the Great Spotted Woodpecker is heard in a range of approximately the same frequencies, but it is longer - 30 beats. The gray-haired woodpecker has the same number, but the trill is a little “basier”.
When the female arrives in response to this peculiar call, the woodpecker does not behave very friendly with her. He grooms very militantly: his displaying poses are dominated by threatening gestures, like those of jackdaws. The spouses continue to barely tolerate each other, this is the impression observers get. One will arrive, the other will soon fly away. They feed the chicks and quickly part ways. Everyone lives on their own territory, from which they also expel grown-up children.
Black woodpecker, or yellow woodpecker, in a typical woodpecker position: the tail rests on the bark. There are 14 species of woodpeckers in the USSR. The largest one is yellow. He is black, like a raven, with a red cap. The female has red feathers only on the back of her head. Sitting on a tree or flying through the forest, it shouts loudly “kru-kru-kru”, then in a drawn-out, nasal voice “kiya”. The hollow is hollowed out with a rectangular or oval entrance.
The most common woodpecker is the Great Spotted Woodpecker. Also loud. It catches your eye more often than others. The entrance to the hollow is round. The smallest woodpecker is the lesser spotted woodpecker, about the size of a sparrow. All three species nest in the USSR in the forest belt from the western to the eastern borders, as well as in the Caucasus.
In the forests of almost the entire world, except Madagascar, New Guinea, Australia and nearby islands, there are 207 species of woodpeckers and two species of woodpeckers (one in Africa, the other in Eurasia). Whirlwinds do not dig into trees, their beaks are weak, and their tails are also not suitable for resting on a tree, like woodpeckers. The tongue is sticky, long, of the same structure as that of woodpeckers, but without spines at the end. Wrigglers catch ants with this tongue and deftly fish out pupae and larvae from their nests, which is what they mainly feed on. The wryneck is famous for its skillful imitation of a snake. Caught in a hollow or otherwise taken by surprise and frightened, even wounded, slowly, like a snake, as far as it can, of course, twists its neck and hisses at the same time! The effect is unexpected and probably scares off some enemies, but it is interesting that the same “snake” movements are also seen in the mating games of whirligigs.
The South African woodpecker avoids forests and trees. On the ground and, rummaging in it, catches ants, termites, spiders and other insects. It does not hollow out trees, but digs deep holes in cliffs and hills. It hatches chicks in them. Woodpeckers nesting in holes are also found in South America. And in South Asia there live red-headed, or short-tailed, woodpeckers, who live in complete comfort with eggs and chicks in the tree nests of very angry fire ants. Woodpeckers, unceremoniously invading their home, however, coexist peacefully with these “mad” ants, although they peck ant pupae “without rising from their eggs.”
"Sweet Friendship". Woodpeckers have many relatives in the tropics. By the way, they are completely different from them! For example, barbies, with long bristles at the base of the beak. 76 species in America, Africa and Asia. For their monotonous “songs” that sound like beating metal, they are also called coppersmiths. They nest in hollows, which they dig into rotten wood with their strong beaks.
American jacamaras, 15 species, also from the order Woodpeckers. They are very beautifully colored, catch insects, mainly butterflies, and nest in burrows, less often in termite mounds. There is nothing special to say about them. But other woodpecker relatives have been surprising people with their strange habits for centuries, and until now, apparently, not all of their secrets have been sufficiently studied.
Four hundred years ago, one Portuguese missionary was outraged by the impudence of small gray-brown birds: they flew into a church, it was in Africa, and pecked candles right on the altar! Later, of course, this minor incident was forgotten. But in last years It was noticed: honey guides, or honey guides, which look more like sparrows, only larger than woodpeckers, actually fly to the smell of burning wax candles. Just the smell! This has been established both by observation and anatomically: the olfactory lobes in the brain of honey eaters are well developed. But why does the smell of wax attract these birds?
Another unique habit of these birds will explain everything to us. It's about about friendship, or rather, cooperation established over centuries, a kind of symbiosis, a honey-catcher with a honey badger - a badger ratel and some other wild animals of Africa and even with humans.
Toucan
The honey badger beekeeper and the honey scout are a wonderful pair. One finds honey, the other extracts it. They eat together. The honey hunter finds a nest of wild bees - in Africa, many bees, like bumblebees, live in the ground - and flies to the ratel's hole. “Churr-churr” crackles, flutters from bush to bush: calling a badger out of its hole. He hears the signal and gets out. The honeyman leads him to the bees' nest. It will fly a little forward and wait for the ratel. Then it flies further. Leads to a bee's nest and hides in a tree.
The badger destroys the bee's nest, eats the honey and the baby, and the honey collector eats up the empty honeycombs. This amazing bird, it turns out, can feed on wax, which the stomachs of other animals cannot digest. Only wax moth, whose larvae live in bee honeycombs, challenges the honey expert for the honor of a unique wax eater. A whole world of symbiotic bacteria and yeast has formed in the honey lover’s intestines. It is they who decompose the wax, turning it into fatty acid, which are then absorbed by the bird’s body. Residents of some places where honey hunters live, following the instructions of the bird, extract honey from wild bees. Honey hunters lead people to their nests. “Wild bees are very willing to build their nests in baobab hollows.
When a honeyguide bird finds such a nest, it emits a jubilant cry. Africans, honey collectors, respond to this call. This one is incredible at first glance. collaboration people and birds arose, apparently, because at first the honeyguide birds called the honeyeater birds with their cry. Obviously, people, in their opinion, have the right to this. When the Africans arrive at the place, the bird falls silent.
Africans always leave honeycombs as a share of the spoils for the honeyguide bird. As soon as people move about fifty meters away, the bird flies in to take advantage of its prey. First she eats the larvae, and then starts to eat the honeycombs" (Bernhard Grzimek). at least, two types of honey experts are engaged in such matters. And there are 17 of them in total: 15 - in Africa, south of the Sahara, 2 - in India (on the slopes of the Himalayas), in Indochina and on some islands of Indonesia.
Apparently, all honeyguides, like cuckoos, do not incubate eggs. They throw them into the nests different birds: woodpeckers and other brethren, hoopoes, orioles, shrikes, kingfishers... Honeyeater chicks kill their half-siblings or pierce their eggs with a sharp egg tooth. Some even have two such “teeth” at the end of the beak. They are directed downward and form deadly forceps with the tip of the mandible. After a week, the egg teeth fall off, and the honey hunters can no longer kill. But perhaps those chicks that were not dealt with in time are being pushed out of the nest. Usually one, rarely two, of these “cuckoo chicks” sit in an occupied nest for about four weeks and feed on the offerings of their adoptive parents.
Why does a toucan have such a nose? The beak of toucans has surpassed all imaginable norms! Huge in comparison to birds: some have longer bodies (except for the tail). Orange, red, yellow-black, green, often multi-colored. Up to five different tones in its color! Thick, but light, not massive. Serrated along the cutting edge. Very impressive beak! Why is he such a toucan?
At one time it was assumed that with its grandiose beak the toucan, hiding in a hollow, defends the entrance to it. It later turned out that although he could have successfully followed such advice, he did not. When there is danger, it flies out of the hollow. Of course, the large beak is very helpful in picking fruits from thin branches, while the toucan itself sits on a fairly thick branch, which still holds it and does not break. But a long thin beak would be suitable for this. The excessive thickness of the “nose” even gets in the way here, and its brightly colored decoration is completely useless. Therefore, it is believed that the beak of a toucan is most likely a signal sign that helps birds find and recognize each other more easily. Or a sexual stimulus, like a peacock's tail. In the everyday, so to speak, relationships of toucans, the beak plays an important role. They often drum on bitches with their beaks, producing sounds that attract partners. Or they fence with them while playing. They “hug”, clasping each other’s beaks. They throw berries around: one throws them, the second catches them with their beak.
The thick beak is also suitable as a weapon. When attacking the nests of neighbors, toucans boldly use their “noses”: their impressive dimensions and bright, often black and orange (warning, like a wasp) coloring frighten even small ones birds of prey, and they shamefully leave their nests. Toucans hastily swallow eggs or chicks and fly away. In flight, the bulky beak is safe: here toucans are usually attacked by birds robbed by it.
This beak is suitable for “bagging” a small snake, lizard or spider, catching winged termites when they swarm, or snatching fish out of the water and, of course, for eating fruits and berries - the main food of toucans.
But the magnificent beak is not suitable for chiseling wood, even rotten ones, although some toucans try to do this. Therefore, having driven out the owners, they have to occupy woodpecker hollows and various natural cavities in the trunks, expanding the entrance, if necessary. The eggs hatch directly on wood dust. In old hollows, occupied by toucans from year to year, a litter of undigested seeds is formed, which, apparently, they regurgitate here specifically for this purpose.
Toucan chicks are naked, red-skinned, and blind. Eyes open very late - after three weeks! They also grow feathers slowly - the menstruation has not yet fully fledged. They have heel calluses on their feet, protection, so to speak, from “bedsores.” After all, hollows sit on a hard tree for a long time, about two months.
Large toucans are poor flyers and are reluctant to take to the air. They flap their wings, and then glide while descending (apparently, the beak pulls down; although it is relatively light, it is still too large, “sails”). The flight of toucans is wavy. They prefer to jump in the branches. Cheerful birds: they often play with each other, jump, knock on branches with their beaks and, bowing their heads, listen to their “music”. They bathe with noise and screams in the forks of thick branches, where rainwater collects. Curious, one might say, even mischievous, the birds are friendly among themselves, they do not abandon wounded relatives, but all together, like crows, attack the enemy. In the evenings, before going to bed, yellow-billed toucans start duet “chants” on the same tree of their choice. However, their wild cries can hardly be called singing. Having sat down tete-a-tete and raising their grotesque beaks to the sky, strangely, not like a bird, they shout: “Hee-knook! Hee-knook*!” The shrill cries of other toucans are more like the croaking of frogs, like the yelps of a puppy.
Arassari toucans spend the night in hollows in groups of five to six birds. They sleep like this: the bulky beak is laid on the back, and the tail is thrown up and forward, over the beak: “The last bird squeezes itself into such a room backwards, with its tail laid on its back.”
In many Arassari, males are colored differently than females: the head, chest, and neck are black (in females they are chestnut or dark gray). True toucans are usually jet black, with dazzling orange, yellow or white spots on the throat and chest, and on the rump. The undertail is red. The bare skin on the “face” around the eyes is orange, blue, green, yellow. The eyes are usually blue. Forty species of toucans (11 of them are true, genus Ramfastus) are found in Central and South America.
Literature: Akimushkin I.I. Animal World (Bird Tales)/Eureka Series; Artists A. Bloch, B. Zhutovsky - Moscow: Young Guard - 1971, p. 384
Having been in the forest, probably each of you has heard the sound of a woodpecker. You are walking on skis in winter or along a summer forest path and suddenly you hear a loud, persistent knocking right above your head. This beats the old one tall tree, getting his own food, is a hard worker woodpecker. It is known that woodpeckers are sometimes called forest doctors. By chiseling the bark and trunk of old trees, they extract harmful insects and their larvae. The long round tongue of the woodpecker is designed so that it can penetrate the winding passages made in the wood harmful insects- destroyers of the forest. At the end of the woodpecker's tongue there are small tenacious hooks with which it pulls out hidden insects from the wood. Not all of you know that woodpeckers are the first heralds of the approaching spring. You are walking through the forest on a fine February or March day - and suddenly you hear a strange sound. In the spring, woodpeckers choose dry treetops and drum so quickly that their trill can be mistaken for the continuous creaking of an old tree. But how can a tree creak if there is no wind? Strange sound echoes far through the quiet forest. This spring drum trill is released by a woodpecker drummer sitting on a dry, ringing peak. If you stop and listen carefully, you can hear distant answering trills in the forest. This is how our spotted woodpeckers greet the Russian spring with ringing trills.
I really like watching woodpeckers. They enliven our quiet winter forest: every now and then you hear the sharp cry of a woodpecker flying from one tree to another. Sitting on bottom part tree trunk, the woodpecker, leaning on its strong tail, rises higher and higher in a spiral. Our great and small woodpeckers are amazingly beautiful. They look like colorfully colored exotic birds. Woodpeckers do not fly far away for the winter. warm countries, winter in their native forests.
Large black woodpeckers with red heads also live in our forests. People call black woodpeckers yellow. With a loud cry, the yellowtail flies from tree to tree, and its drum trill is heard even louder.
In addition to spotted and black woodpeckers, there are green woodpeckers in our forests. You used to walk through the forest in the summer - and suddenly, almost from under your very feet, a green woodpecker would flutter out of a large ant heap and fly. Green woodpeckers dig up high ant heaps, get ant eggs and larvae. I had to read that woodpeckers stick their long round tongue into ant heaps and swallow the live ants stuck to it.
I have never seen pileated woodpeckers sitting on ant heaps, but many times I have seen the pure white trunks of birch trees, the bark of which is studded in a strict spiral with the strong beaks of pileated woodpeckers. Perhaps they do this in the spring to enjoy the sweet birch sap.
A pileated woodpecker loudly pecking at a tree is easy to attract. You need to hide behind the trunk of one of the nearby trees and, taking a twig or stick in your hand, knock on the trunk, imitating a woodpecker. Busy with its business, a curious woodpecker will listen to the sound of a stick and will certainly fly up to you. By moving carefully from tree to tree, you can entice a curious woodpecker to follow you for a long time.
Many times I had to find woodpecker nests in the forest. In the trunks of trees with soft wood, they hollow out deep hollows with a neatly made round entrance. Woodpeckers build their nests in these hollows, hatch and feed their children. I often observed how adult woodpeckers feed their growing chicks, whose nosed heads, as if tied with red scarves, poked out of the hollow. Once I had a chance to see grown chicks fly out of a hollow. Young fledged woodpeckers sat on the branches of nearby trees and screamed loudly, calling for their mother and father. Apparently, at first they were afraid to remain free.
IN winter time Woodpeckers feed on the seeds of spruce cones. In the clefts of trees they skillfully set up their winter workshops - woodpecker forges. Brought in paws fir cones They deftly put them into their workbench and hollow out the seeds from the cones. Under each woodpecker's forest workbench you can see a whole bunch of disheveled, gutted pine cones.
Everyone knows that the woodpecker is a very useful bird for our forests. But it’s not just the benefits that woodpeckers bring to forests that interest me. I admire its beauty, the variegated coloring of its plumage, its intelligence, and I rejoice at the woodpecker’s drumming, which heralds the coming of spring.
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is the most important doctor of our forests. Everyone knows where and how to find him: he sits taller than everyone else, and is painted brighter than everyone else. Little Red Riding Hood, white robe, black pants, a festive yellow jacket - what’s not to be handsome?! This bird sits on the trunk in a peculiar way, unlike everyone else - like a “soldier”. It catches itself with its sharp claws, supports itself with its hard and elastic tail, peels pine cones and bark with its beak, and removes pests.
In search of food, the great spotted woodpecker moves up the trunk in a spiral, stopping high above the ground. If frightened, he hides behind a tree trunk and glances at the stranger from time to time.
But the woodpecker's beak is also musical instrument. As soon as he knocks on a dry branch in the spring, the drum roll will cut through the silence: “Tra-ta-ta.”
Woodpeckers fly well and quickly, but they prefer to climb trees, using their wings only to fly to the next tree.
From the very beginning of spring to May, woodpeckers drum on branches with suitable resonance. The fraction consists of 12-18 beats, the tempo increases, and after 2-3 minutes everything is repeated. The shot serves to secure territory and attract a female. In April, the drumming reaches its climax. Some woodpeckers living in the suburbs discover the charm of using roofing tin as a resonator and drumming on gutters and other metal parts. When a woodpecker drums, it taps vertically on its “drum,” while when searching for food, it performs side kicks to reach insects and their larvae.
These birds nest in hollows that they hollow out themselves. But an unfriendly woodpecker family will not last long in such a nest. At first, while the chicks are small, the female woodpecker carefully takes care of the children, hoping for their help in the future; He doesn’t forget to feed the father of the family.
But a little later he will chase away the grown chicks and wave his wing to his beloved - that’s how they are freedom-loving disposition, from the drummers.
Great spotted woodpecker voice:
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A. Gorkanova. "Migratory and wintering birds of Russia. Thematic dictionary in pictures"
Artist: Ekaterina Reznichenko
The biological features of woodpeckers undoubtedly include their beak, which literally works like a jackhammer. And this obviously requires a specific structure in their skull that can prevent concussions. Indeed, woodpeckers have a number of special structures in the bones and muscles of the skull, which provide the necessary shock absorption...
The structure of the tongue of woodpeckers is also interesting, which looks like a long thin snake that easily “crawls” not only into the holes hollowed out by the bird, but also into the nooks and crannies of wood eaten by bark beetles and longhorned beetles. The woodpecker's tongue is very sticky and very long, and there are also spines at the end that help extract prey from deep passages. Thus, a green woodpecker is able to stick its tongue out of its mouth almost 10 centimeters. Therefore, in order to accommodate an insect-producing device in the throat, in the process of evolution, the tendonous base of the tongue was removed from the oral cavity and looped around the skull!
Thus, the woodpecker’s strong beak serves them to extract insects and their larvae from durable wood or seeds from cones. coniferous trees. In addition, with the help of their beaks, woodpeckers in the spring make holes in the bark of birch trees, after which they happily drink the flowing sweetish birch sap. They also use their beak to create an apartment in the form of a hollow hollowed out in a tree trunk. Moreover, such labor-intensive work usually takes them no more than two weeks. And in mating season males tirelessly drum with their beaks on a resonating dry trunk or branch, tapping out simple serenades to their girlfriends, inviting them to unite in legal marriage to create a family for this season.
Such drum trills, filling the forest, are an essential and enchanting accompaniment to various spring sounds and bird songs. For each species of woodpecker that knocks in its own rhythm, the woody sound under its blows vibrates in a special frequency range. Woodpeckers can communicate their intentions to a partner or rival by varying the intervals between blows, the duration of the drum trill, etc. Therefore, ornithologists, experts in woodpecker trills, can accurately determine by their drumming: a woodpecker is drumming on its own territory or is claiming someone else’s, is calling a friend, or they have already connected and the woodpecker invites her to fly after him to show the place he has chosen for future nest.
The longest trill, lasting 2-3 seconds, is that of the black woodpecker (yellow). And it includes about 40 rapidly successive beats, which can only be counted by slow playback of a tape or dictaphone recording. The yellow trill is the lowest frequency among woodpeckers, it lies in the range of 1-1.5 kilohertz. The Great Spotted Woodpecker has a shorter trill, sounding at higher pitches, in the range of about 4 kilohertz and consisting of approximately 12-16 beats over a time period of 0.6 seconds. Similar to the trill of the Great Spotted Woodpecker and the drum song of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, which lies in the same frequency range, but it is longer and consists of about 30 beats. The gray-haired woodpecker has a lower-frequency (“bass”) trill, also consisting of approximately 30 beats.
When the female flies to this peculiar mating call of the male, the woodpecker does not behave very gentlemanly and friendly with her, as he courtes her very belligerently. In the mating (lekking) poses of the male, threatening gestures predominate, as, for example, in jackdaws. Observers of family life woodpeckers the impression is created that the woodpeckers are spouses and throughout their short life together They can barely tolerate each other. And indeed, as soon as one of them flies to the nest, the other quickly flies away. And as soon as they feed their chicks, they soon part ways. In the future, each of the spouses lives on their own territory, from which they expel their grown-up youth.
In the territory former USSR There are 14 species of woodpeckers, of which the largest is the black woodpecker or woodpecker. It is characterized by a black outfit, like a raven, and only the males have a red “cap” on their heads, while the females have red feathers only on the back of the head. Zhelna, both sitting on a tree and flying through the forest, emits loud cries: “kru-kru-kru”, followed by a drawn-out and nasal “kiya”. The woodpecker hollows out a hollow for its nest with an oval or almost rectangular entrance.
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is the most common member of the family. He catches our eye more often than other woodpeckers and is also quite noisy. But he always makes the entrance to his hollow round. The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is the smallest of the woodpeckers and is similar in size to sparrows. And all three species of woodpeckers noted above nest in forest belts almost everywhere; they also live in the Caucasus.
In the world fauna, at least 207 species of woodpeckers have been recorded, living in various forests almost all over the world, with the exception of Australia and nearby islands, New Guinea and Madagascar, and there are only two species of woodpeckers, of which one lives in Africa, the second has settled in Eurasia . Unlike woodpeckers, whirligigs do not chisel tree trunks, since they have weak beaks, and the tail feathers are also not suitable for resting on a tree. But here is a long and sticky tongue, the same structure as that of woodpeckers, although there are no spines at the end. Wrigglers use their tongue to catch adult ants and deftly fish out pupae and larvae from their nests, which form the basis of their diet. And the whirligig is famous for its skillful imitation of a snake. A bird, taken by surprise in a hollow and very frightened, slowly, like a snake, turns its neck and at the same time effectively hisses! The effect of this is quite unexpected and often scares away their enemies. It is also interesting that the same “snake” movements were noted in the mating games of whirligigs during the initial breeding season.
The habits of the South African woodpecker, which avoids forests and trees, are unusual and interesting. Being constantly on the ground, he rummages in it, catching ants, termites, spiders and other insects living there. To hatch chicks, he digs deep holes in cliffs and hills.
In South America there are also woodpeckers that nest in burrows. And in South Asia live short-tailed, or red-haired, woodpeckers, who have learned to settle down with eggs and chicks directly in the tree nests of fire ants. Woodpeckers, having unceremoniously invaded their home, subsequently coexist peacefully with these evil and “mad” ants, although they do not miss the opportunity to peck ant pupae without leaving the nest while incubating their eggs.
Since ancient times, everyone has been familiar with the sound of a forest shot being knocked out, to which you involuntarily listen and rejoice like a child: woodpecker! In fairy tales, he is called a forest doctor and is endowed with the traits of a tireless worker, kind and persistent in establishing order and providing assistance. What is he really like?
Woodpecker family
The woodpecker family is huge and has settled almost all over the world, except Antarctica, Australia and several islands. It is difficult to count all their species: according to rough estimates, there are more than 200 living in large numbers, and the condition of others is little known, some are already recognized as extinct. There are 14 species of woodpecker birds in Russia.
Woodpecker feeding
The main food in the warm season consists of woodworms: insects, their larvae, termites, aphids. It is interesting that the woodpecker obtains food only from diseased and rotten plants, without touching healthy trees.
But simple gathering is not alien to it, so berries and plant seeds occupy a significant place in the diet; the woodpecker encroaches on small passerine birds, their eggs and chicks.
In winter, the main diet consists of seeds and nuts extracted from cones. coniferous plants. The woodpecker creates entire forges by placing cones in crevices and breaking them with his beak. In the forest you can find mountains of husks from such work. Sometimes creates storage rooms. In frosty weather, birds can approach cities, feeding on food waste and carrion.
Instead of water in winter, the woodpecker swallows snow, and in spring it likes to extract birch or maple sap by breaking through the bark of trees. Buds and young shoots of plants also become food.
Woodpecker reproduction and lifespan
The mating season of woodpeckers begins in the spring. Having decided on the choice of a pair, the birds build a nesting hollow. They work in turns, lining the bottom with wood chips. To protect the offspring from predators, they make two very small entrances and camouflage them with branches, and sometimes they immediately place their shelter under a tree tinder fungus.
3-7 white eggs are hatched in turn, and after 15 days the first chicks begin to appear. Their appearance is completely helpless: naked, blind, deaf. But after about a month, the fledgling inheritance squeals so much that it is not difficult for hunters to find them. Having not yet learned to fly, they are already running along the trunk.
Pictured is a woodpecker chick
A year later, sexual maturity sets in, but already in the first winter, the parents mercilessly drive away the young, since it is easier for woodpeckers to feed themselves one at a time. Woodpeckers live different types in natural conditions from approximately 5 to 11 years.
Woodpeckers in Russia
Representatives of different species of woodpeckers live in the forests of Russia, among which the most common are
- black or yellow,
- big motley,
- small motley,
- three-fingered gray-haired
- green.
Black is the most great woodpecker, weight up to 300 grams, from the woodpecker inhabitants of our country. It differs from others by its oval entrance to a spacious hollow. Another special feature is a long and loud trill, which is considered a call to relatives.
In the photo there is a black woodpecker bird
Big and small spotted woodpecker– these views are some of the most beautiful. Greater Pied is often found in park area and city limits. Small, about the size, lives in the Caucasus, and Primorye, on Sakhalin. It is considered the most playful and agile.
Pictured is a Great Spotted Woodpecker
Three-toed woodpecker- resident of the northern coniferous forests. He is very voracious: in a day he can peel off a tall spruce to get bark beetles. The name refers to the missing front finger. The green woodpecker, unlike its relatives, runs well on the ground in search of worms and caterpillars. He loves ant eggs, which is why he digs holes in anthills.
Pictured is a three-toed gray woodpecker
The birds' bright plumage and activity make them targets for captivity. About the woodpecker at home it is known that it is easily tamed, even flies to its name, but to create conditions for the bird, spacious enclosures with tree trunks are needed.
Communication with birds requires caution, as they can injure with a blow from their beak. If you manage to create an artificial corner of the forest for a woodpecker, then it will certainly become a favorite, communication with which will bring many pleasant moments.
