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see woodpeckerwoodpecker,
common name for members of the Picidae, a large family of climbing birds found in most parts of the world. Woodpeckers typically have sharp, chisellike bills for pecking holes in tree trunks, and long, barbed, extensible tongues with which they impale their insect
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By mid century, the park's climate is projected to improve for birds that live in dry forests at mid elevation, like the western tanager, pygmy nuthatch, and red-naped sapsucker, and worsen for birds in cooler, wetter, high-elevation forests, like the American three-toed woodpecker, pine grosbeak, and Townsend's solitaire.
The last woodpecker species to call New York home is the yellow-bellied sapsucker (pictured on page 23).
Sapsuckers use a different strategy in early spring, when trees are surging with upward-moving, watery sap in their woody tissue (xylem) that carries nutrients from the roots to developing leaves (maple sap is one example).
Sapsuckers also feed on tree sap (surprise) and the inner bark of trees.
The men fled immediately, but Blackbeard only emerged later snarling: 'Damn ye, ye yellow-bellied sapsuckers! I'm a better man than all ye milksops put together.'
When Blackbeard finally emerged he snarled, 'Damn ye, ye yellow-bellied sapsuckers! I'm a better man than all ye milksops put together!'
Sapsuckers and whippoorwills in the dark do it, Snipes on a lark do it, Even hummingbirds without words do it, Woodcocks and wild duck, they say, rue it, Let's do it, to wit, Too-whit!
Sapsuckers constitute another potentially destructive group of woodpeckers, as they drill holes deep into the bark to feed on oozing sap.
To explain the sapsucker's bill, we do not look at the inner workings of the bill, but tell a story about how bills of a particular sort contribute to the chances of individual sapsuckers living long enough to reproduce (confers selective advantage), and then a story about how selective advantages conferred upon individuals in a population make a feature statistically likely to proliferate in future generations, as those members with the selective advantage are more successful at producing progeny.
2-e Sapsuckers are woodpeckers that tap holes like these in trees.
The stinging trees of Wongabel were crawling with creatures: spiders, scarab beetles, green ants, mites, katydids, sapsuckers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, a few snails and the occasional frog and lizard.