Okay! so no prizes for guessing that this bird loves wood. It keeps pecking on the wood. It has unusually

short legs and four clawed feet (two toes in front and two in behind). Its short legs and sharp claws help it to cling on the wood.

Woodpeckers are best known for their habit of drilling holes in trees for nests and to hunt insects. But this is not the only reason. Woodpeckers also drum on tree trunks to communicate to other woodpeckers. This drilling machine can peck about 15 to 16 times in a single second.

Most woodpeckers have an extraordinarily long tongue. This allows the birds to get to difficult  places.  There are hard, saliva coated bristles on the end of the tongue. These bristles help in grabbing the prey.

Many people wrongly assume that woodpeckers eat wood, but that is not true. Some woodpeckers gather acorns, pine nuts and fruit like squirrels. Some eat insects, especially wood-boring insects, grubs and ants. Their diet changes depending on the season. Some species even store foods for winter when there is no food around.

Woodpeckers lay 2 – 8 white eggs. Both parents take care of the eggs. The young ones cannot see and have no feathers. But they grow up to be exactly like their parents.

Woodpecker’s drilling and tapping adds up to about 12,000 pecks a day!! Whoa! That’s too much! Don’t know about the woodpeckers, but whoever is next to them is sure to have a throbbing headache ;)