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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: WIL-YAK |
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WOODPECKER , a bird that pecks or picks holes in wood
' The number. of English names, ancient and modern, by which these birds are known is very great, and even a bare list
highhaw," and, after its original
bright particoloured plumage, in which black, white, brown,, olive, green, yellow, orange or scarletthe last commonly visible on some part of the headmingled in varying proportions, and most often strongly contrasted with one another, appear; while the less conspicuous markings take the form of bars, spangles, tear-drops, arrow-heads or scales. Woodpeckers inhabit most parts of the world, with the exception of Madagascar and the Australian Region, save Celebes and Flores; but itmay be worth stating that no member of the group is known to have occurred in Egypt. Of the three British species, the green woodpecker, Gecinus or Picus viridis, though almost unknown in Scotland or Ireland, is the commonest, frequenting wooded districts, and more often heard than seen, its laughing cry (whence the name " Yaffil " or " Yaffle," by which it is in many parts known), and undulating flight afford equally good means of recognition, even when it is not near enough for its colours to be discerned. About the size of a jay, its scarlet crown and bright yellow rump, added to its prevailing grass-green plumage, make it a sightly bird, and hence it often suffers at the hands of those who wish to keep its stuffed skin as an ornament. Besides the scarlet crown, the cock bird has a patch of the same colour running backward from the base of the lower mandible, a patch that in the hen is black .2 Woodpeckers in general are very shy birds, and to observe the habits of the species is not easy. Its ways, however, are well worth watching, since the ease with which it mounts, almost always spirally, the vertical trunks and oblique arms of trees as it searches the interstices of the bark for its food, flying off when it reaches the smaller or upper brancheseither to return to the base of the same tree and renew its course on a fresh line, or to begin upon another tree near byand the care it shows in its close examination, will repay a patient observer. The nest almost always consists of a hole _ chiselled by the bird's strong beak, impelled by very powerful muscles, in the upright trunk or arm of a tree, the opening being quite circular, and continued as a horizontal
Of generally similar habits are the two other woodpeckers which inhabit Britainthe pied or greater spotted and the barred or lesser spotted woodpeckerDendrocopus major and D. minoreach of great beauty, from the contrasted white, blue-black and scarlet that enter into its plumage. Both of these birds have an extraordinary habit of causing by quickly-repeated blows of their beak on a branch, or even on a small bough, a vibrating noise, louder than that of a watchman's rattle, and enough to excite the attention of the most incurious. Though the pied woodpecker is a resident
2 A patch of conspicuous colour, generally red, on this part is characteristic of very many woodpeckers, and careless writers often call it " mystacial," or some more barbarously " moustachial." Considering that moustaches spring from above the mouth, and have nothing to do with the mandible or lower jaw, no term could be more misleading.' It often happens that, just as the woodpecker's labours are over, a pair of starlings will take possession of the newly-bored hole, and, by conveying into it some nesting furniture, render it unfit for the rightful tenants, who thereby suffer ejectment, and have to begin all their trouble again. It has been stated of this and other wood
The three species just mentioned are the only woodpeckers that inhabit Britain, though several others are mistakenly recorded as occurring in the countryand especially the great black woodpecker, the Picus martins of Linnaeus, which must be regarded as the type of that genus.' This fine species considerably exceeds the green woodpecker in size, and except. for its red cap is wholly black. It is chiefly an inhabitant of the fir forests of the Old World, from Lapland
First of these is the Californian woodpecker, Melanerpes formicivorus, which has been said to display an amount of providence beyond almost any other bird in the number of acorns it fixes tightly in holes which it makes in the bark of trees, and thus " a large pine forty
spring to the forests where its supplies are laid up. It has been asserted that the acorns thus stored are always those which contain a maggot, and, being fitted into the sockets pre-pared for them cup-end foremost, the enclosed insects are unable to escape, as they otherwise would, and are thus ready for consumption by the birds on their return from the south. But this statement has again been contradicted, and, moreover, it is alleged that these woodpeckers follow their instinct so blindly that " they do not distinguish between an acorn and a pebble," so that they " fill up the holes they have drilled with so much labor, not only with acorns but occasionally with stones " (cf. Baird, Brewer and Ridgway, North American Birds, ii. pp. 569-571).The next North-American form deserving notice is the genus Cola pies, represented in the north and east by C. auratus, the golden-winged woodpecker or flicker, in most parts of the country a familiar bird, but in the south and west replaced by the allied C. mexicanus, easily distinguishable among other characteristics by having the shafts of its quills red instead of yellow. It is curious, however, that, in the valleys of the upper Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, where the range of the two kinds overlaps, birds are found presenting an extraordinary mixture of the otherwise distinctive features of each. Other North American forms are the downy and hairy wood-peckers, small birds with spotted black and white plumage, which are very valuable as destroyers of harmful grubs and borers; the red-headed woodpecker, a very handsome form with strongly contrasted red, black and white plumage, common west of the Alleghany Mountains; and the yellow-bellied woodpecker (" sapsucker "). Some other woodpeckers deserve especial noticethe Colaptes or Soroplex campestris, which inhabits the treeless plains of Paraguay and La Plata; also the South-African woodpecker Geocolaptes olivaceus, which lives almost entirely on the ground or rocks, and picks a hole for its nest in the bank of a stream (Zoologist, 1882, p. 208). The woodpeckers, together with the wrynecks (q.v.), form a very natural division of scansorial birds with zygodactylous feet, and were regarded by T. H. Huxley as forming a distinct division of birds to which he gave the name Celeomorphae, whilst W. K. Parker separated them from all other birds as Saurognathae. (A. N.) End of Article: WOODPECKER If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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