Woodpeckers
Woodpeckers are specialized birds. They have unusual features and capabilities that work together to achieve one goal: to find insects that are hidden inside the bark of trees or other covered areas such as termite or ant hills.
Here is one example of those special features. Suppose you banged your head against a wall, not once, but several thousand times a day. Chances are you would faint – or worse, suffer brain damage - from the shock. Yet, that is what a woodpecker does every day without any problem as it pecks on trees looking for cavities that may contain insects.
To mitigate the shock of the blows, woodpeckers have evolved skull bones that act like shock absorbers. They also have hard, wedge-shaped tail feathers which they use to support themselves as they climb up a tree trunk. Most woodpecker species have three toes facing forward and one facing back. This helps them climb vertically. Their long, rolled-up tongues are covered with sticky saliva. When a woodpecker opens an insect cavity inside a tree, it unrolls its tongue which reaches deep into the cavity. Insects, larvae and eggs stick to the saliva and the bird rolls back its tongue to extract them.
The flight of woodpecker is also distinctive. It flies slower than many other birds in an undulating, wavy pattern. To find a mate a male woodpecker will drum with its beak and follow up with a display flight and loud calls. Most woodpeckers usually build their homes in tree cavities.
There are 218 species of woodpecker in the world. Nineteen of them can be seen in Bangladesh. They vary in colour and range in size from the tiny White-browed Piculet (9 cm.) to the large Great Slaty Woodpecker (50 cm.) Incidentally, both are rare and have eluded me. On the other hand, our most common woodpecker is the Black-rumped Flameback sporting a red crown and a yellow back. I see it almost every day in the trees in our local park.
Several other woodpeckers are also common in Bangladesh. In the countryside you can see Fulvous-breasted and Rufous Woodpeckers. My favourite woodpeckers, however, are found in the forests. They are the Greater and Lesser Yellownape, their bright yellow crowns standing out against an olive green body. The rare Streak-Breasted Woodpecker is seen exclusively in Sundarban where I have also seen the tiny Speckled Piculet. The Eurasian Wryneck, whose outward appearance resembles the texture of a snake, can turn its head in awkward angles, earning the Bengali name "Gharbyetha." It is a winter migrant, but the rest of our woodpeckers live here year-round.
Woodpeckers occupy a special place among all birds. In Bangladesh, we are blessed with a diverse selection of woodpeckers.
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