As a birder, I had heard that if you paid careful attention to the head feathers on the downy woodpeckers that visited your bird feeders, you could begin to recognize individual birds. This intrigued me. I even went so far ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 7, 2018
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11
The two largest woodpeckers in North America, the Imperial Woodpecker and Ivory-billed Woodpecker, are believed to have gone extinct during the twentieth century. Can their surviving cousin, the Pileated Woodpecker, persist ...
Ecology
Aug 22, 2018
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8
The drum rolls of great spotted woodpeckers may be used to identify individuals, according to a study published February 7, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Michal Budka from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 7, 2018
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95
With woodpeckers, the answer's in the question—true to their name, they peck wood. And when they do, they peck hard—with each peck, the bird undergoes a force of 1,200 to 1,400 g's. By comparison, a measly force of 60-100 ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 2, 2018
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395
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service started the Safe Harbor program in North Carolina in 1995 to reduce conflict between landowners and conservation officials and to encourage private landowners to take steps to benefit endangered ...
Ecology
Jan 24, 2018
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16
Keeping tabs on wild birds has long been a low-tech proposition. While radio collars and satellite tags became standard for tracking big mammals, binoculars and notebooks have remained critical for following most twittering, ...
Ecology
Jun 22, 2017
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0
An ornithological mystery has been solved! Puzzling red feathers have been popping up in eastern North America's "yellow-shafted" population of Northern Flickers, but they aren't due to genes borrowed from their "red-shafted" ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 12, 2016
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0
Animal behavior researchers at Wake Forest University have found that the highly territorial downy woodpecker interprets drumming intensity from adversaries to figure out who is or isn't a threat.
Plants & Animals
Mar 4, 2016
0
147
It was a stealth operation. A group of highly trained specialists infiltrated the area at dark, quietly deploying a range of technical apparatus to neutralize and secure eight carefully selected individuals, then whisking ...
Ecology
Oct 30, 2015
0
21
To look tougher, a weakling might shave their head and don a black leather jacket, combat boots and a scowl that tells the world, "don't mess with me."
Plants & Animals
Aug 25, 2015
1
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