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- Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber
One afternoon this past summer, I noticed a pair of redheaded woodpeckers in a cow pasture that was dotted with trees, one of them dead and lacking bark but still standing.
Redheads are not common in this area, but I occasionally see a pair or family of them in short-grass meadows spotted with living and dead trees.
Seven kinds of woodpeckers live in southeastern Pennsylvania at some time of each year, and three of those seven developed special characteristics that set them apart from their relatives and enable them to get food with reduced competition from their cousins.
Those three species are redheaded woodpeckers, northern flickers, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers.
Diverged from a common ancestor, woodpeckers have traits in common. They have two toes in front and two in back to brace themselves upright on tree trunks while chipping into wood after invertebrates.
They have stiff tail feathers that help brace them vertically on trees. They have sharp, stout beaks to chip into dead wood and long, sticky tongues they push into insect tunnels in that wood to snare prey.
And woodpeckers use their bills to chisel out nurseries in dead wood.
The handsome, adult redheads have totally red heads and white under parts and are black on top with white on their wings and rumps. Young redheads, however, are brown where they will be red or black when mature.
Catching insects in mid-air and snaring invertebrates from short grass in meadows are habits unique to redheads. These stunning birds are entertaining to watch flipping out after flying insects with the patches of white on their wings flashing like banners.
Flickers, unlike their black-and-white relatives, are mostly brown, which camouflages them when they feed on ants in the ground.
They use their beaks to dig into the soil and then run their long, sticky tongues in ant tunnels to snare those insects. That method of getting food in North America is unique to flickers, free of competition.
Sapsuckers are the only birds in North America that poke shallow holes in young, tender bark, such as in aspen and birch trees. Sugary sap oozes from those wounds, and the sapsuckers return to them to lap the sap and eat any insects in it.
Diverging from their relatives’ usual ways of getting food, redheads, flickers, and sapsuckers have unique food sources, which frees them from competition amongst each other. Those extraordinary foods help ensure the survival of these species.
Clyde McMillan-Gamber is a retired Lancaster County Parks naturalist.