Free Preview: The Wonderful World of Woodpeckers

[Kevin McGowan] Now that we’ve talked a little bit about what a woodpecker is, let’s explore their diversity.
 
Woodpeckers are found around the world, except for where temperatures are extreme and trees are scarce, like the Sahara Desert, and the polar regions. Interestingly, there aren’t any woodpeckers in Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands either, even though woodpeckers could live there. These absences are likely due to limitations in their dispersal abilities. Most woodpeckers aren’t great fliers, and don’t fly long distances, which makes getting to islands difficult.
 
Nearly everywhere else though, is home to all sorts of woodpeckers. In most places, you’ll find just a handful of species, but there are a few places in South America and Southeast Asia that are home to more than a dozen woodpecker species.
 
So, who are these woodpeckers? The family Picidae includes true woodpeckers and their cousins. The most distant cousins in the family are the wrynecks. These are two species with short, pointed bills, rather long, soft tails, big mouths, and very effective camouflage, colored in browns and grays. They’re odd species that forage mostly on the ground, where they primarily eat ants, catching some with their long tongues. I can see a little bit of resemblance to other woodpeckers in their zygodactyl toes and long tongue, but they’re certainly not like most woodpeckers you think of.
 
The true woodpecker’s closest relatives are the piculets. There are about 30 of these species, mostly found in South America, but a few can be found in Southeast Asia, and there’s also one species in Africa. These are a lot smaller and more round than your average woodpecker, with stubby, soft tails. Most of them look vaguely woodpecker-like in their coloration, and they also do some of the same things woodpeckers do, like drum on trees and excavate their own holes. And even though they look vaguely woodpecker-like, a few are rather strange-looking!
 
Now we come to the true woodpeckers. There are more than 200 woodpeckers found around the world. Most of them are called woodpeckers, but there are a few that don’t have ‘woodpecker’ in their name: the sapsuckers, yellownapes, flamebacks, and flickers.
 
Woodpeckers range in size from as small as a sparrow to as big as a crow.
 
Beyond size, there are a few different general motifs of woodpeckers around the world. Probably the most obvious difference among woodpeckers is whether or not they have a crest. The crests are often red, but they can be all kinds of yellow, as well as black, brown, striped, or even polka dotted!
 
Speaking of red, that’s one of the most obvious colors on many woodpeckers. The cap, neck, or breast are some of the most likely places to find red. But other woodpeckers have red on their back, wings, or under their tail.
 
Not all woodpeckers are black, white, and red all over. There are woodpeckers that are green, yellow, gray, and brown. There are even a couple of white woodpeckers, which to my eye definitely stretches what a woodpecker can look like!
 
No matter the color, woodpeckers can be patterned, or plain. Some woodpeckers have pattern just on their backs; others, the pattern is just on their breast. Still others are patterned all over, and some are completely plain. The patterns themselves might be spots, streaks, or big bold patches of color. Within a species, you might find variations of these patterns.
 
Many woodpeckers show sexual dimorphism, where males and females look different from one another. The most common plumage difference between the sexes is the presence of a colored patch on the male, usually red, that’s missing on the female.
 
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about woodpeckers that look different from one another, but let’s take a minute to talk about woodpeckers that look similar to each other. No matter where you are in the world, you’ve probably seen a pair of woodpeckers that look strangely alike.
 
In the northeastern U.S. where I live, it’s the Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers. There are some reliable ways to tell them apart, but I think we can all agree they look amazingly similar to one another.
 
In Europe, it’s the Great and Middle Spotted Woodpeckers.
 
And the Greater and Common Flamebacks of southeast Asia are also remarkably similar to one another.
 
Now you may be thinking that these species must be closely related, but remarkably they’re not!
 
Downy Woodpeckers are more closely related to Nuttall’s and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers.
 
And Hairy Woodpeckers are more closely related to the White-headed Woodpecker and Arizona Woodpecker even though they look so different.
 
Great Spotted Woodpeckers are more closely related to Okinawa and Rufous-bellied Woodpeckers, than the Middle Spotted Woodpecker.
 
And Greater and Common Flamebacks? They’re so unrelated, they’re on completely different sides of the true-woodpecker family tree!
 
So, what’s going on here? Scientists suspect that these pairs are mimicking one another. Specifically, that the less dominant of the two woodpeckers is mimicking the more dominant. This can be an advantage when it comes to interactions with other species, giving the less dominant species a chance to appear more threatening than it really is.
 
That said, scientists are still trying to figure out exactly why, and how, these woodpeckers got to be such good matches for one another.
 
And now you have a basic understanding of the range of woodpeckers and how they can look. Let’s explore some of the more unusual woodpeckers that are out there.