Courts

A handsome hairy wooapecker
appeared at our winter feeding
Station this week. Not hairy in the

- way you think of a human desert

tat, or a hermit living in the
northern bush, scores of miles
from the ministrations of an adept
tonsorial expert.

His picture is in the column
today, so you can see for yourself!
No hairs. Just fine black and white
feathers arranged in an artistic
design. No, 1 don’t know why
anybody would say that he is
hairy!

Hairy woodpeckers have a con-

spicuous white area running up the ~

back, between the wings. He is a

good deal like a large edition of his.

commoner and smaller cousin, the
downy woodpecker, but they are
quite easily distinguished in the
filed, especially when seen
together.

The downy has a very short
sharp beak while the hairy’s is
stouter and longer — about as long
as his head. Nor does the hairy
have those small black bars on the
outer white tail feathers which are
so characteristic of the downy.

The hairy is nearly robin size;
the downy, closer to house spar-
row-size. The hairy is found nght
across Canada from Yukon, the
Queen Charlotte’s and Vancouver
Island all the way to Quebec of the
Not-Withstanding Clause, all of
the Maritimes, and Newfoundland.
He’d be a pretty good federal bird.

Hairy woodpeckers, living
mostly upon grubs which they
hack out of older trees and stumps,
are extremely well adapted to their
mode of life. To begin with, they
have four, well-developed, clawed
toes with which they are able to
cling to the vertical surfaces of
trees while pecking away in search
of their prey some distance below
the bark.

And these toes are directed two
forward and two backward, unlike
the 3-1 relationship in most birds.
This gives them much more stabil-
ity when working upright. In addi-
tion, they have very long tongues
with which they can explore the
deeper cavities excavated by wood-
boring insects.

And how do they know what
they are feeling below the surface?
By the fine sensory corpuscles
which they possess near the end of
the long tongue. These are used
much in the same manner of those
present in the ends of the long
beaks of woodcocks and common
snipes which probe deep below
the surface in soft earth for the
desired food items.

Some of our larger woodpec-
kers, such as our large black
pileated, are able to extend the
tongue several times the length of
the beak.

And the next time you sce a
woodpecker digging into the side
of a tree for insects, take special
notice of the stiff tail feathers with
which they prop themselves at an
angle in the excavating process.
Besides the above adaptations, all
woodpeckers have stronger thicker
skulls which tend to better absorb
the mechanical shock of hard sus-
tained pecking.

Some descriptions of birds sug-
gest that they are mere bundles of
instincts with fixed inflexible
behavioral patterns and with little
insight into causes, effects, etc. I
have often watched woodpeckers
excavating their nesting cavities.

Hairy but hairless, it’s a beaut

HAIRY WOODPECKER.

Should you measure several dif-
ferent diameters of a single
entrance, you will discover that all
of these diameters are almost
exactly the same in length. In
other words, the hole is virtually a
perfect circle.

They peck out the minimum
amount of wood in relation to
need. Moreover, the woodpeckers
cut to right and left when remoy-
ing chips just as an experienced
woodcutter does with his axe.

HOUSE OF RUSSEL

cy Hampson photo

They touch up here and there,
finally ending up with a master-
piece of workmanship.

Mary and I bumped into acom
woodpeckers in Northern Califor-
nia. A pair of them had excavated
many hundreds of small holes in a
large old pine and in each had
stuffed an acorn for future use.
The holes were dug first and
surprising to us, each was just the
right size for the acorn brought in
later!

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TheReview Wednesday, January 3, 1990 — A14 —

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