European green woodpecker main food of the European green woodpecker is ants of the genera "Lasius" and "Formica" for which it spends much of its time foraging on the ground, though other insects and small reptiles are also taken occasionally. The bird's distinctive, elongated, cylindrical droppings often consist entirely of ant remains. At ant nests, it probes into the ground and licks up adult ants and their larvae. They have tongues that wrap to the back of their head. Green woodpeckers will often forage in short grazed or mown permanent grasslands where the availability of ant nests is high. A study of a
Cuban ivory-billed woodpecker of the Cuban form's behaviour and habitat was not published until 1893, when Juan Gundlach included it in Volume 1 of his "Ornitología Cubana". In Cuba it was usually known by the name of "carpintero real" (royal woodpecker), although this name was also used for other birds. As with "C. principalis", the Cuban ivory-bill was thought to inhabit old-growth forests with a plentiful supply of dead or dying trees; these were a source of the cerambycid and other beetle larvae that formed the bulk of its diet. Most of Cuba's lowland deciduous forests had been cleared by the early twentieth