European green woodpecker but is made sticky by secretions from the enlarged salivary glands. Heavy, prolonged snow cover makes feeding difficult for the green woodpecker and can result in high mortality, from which it may take 10 years for the population to recover. Ant nests can be located under the snow; one bird was observed to dig 85 cm to reach a nest. 'Professor Yaffle', the wooden bookend character in the 1974 children's animation series "Bagpuss", was based loosely upon the green woodpecker. 'Yaffle' was among many English folk names for the European green woodpecker relating to its laughing call; others include laughing
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