They are small, brown and fearless. When a fat, red-orange-headed woodpecker (called a red-bellied woodpecker, even though the belly is white) poked its beak into the wren house, the female ...

(See "Weasel Rides Woodpecker in Viral Photo—But Is ... It sits at an angle toward the back of its head, like a half orange with the flat side facing the front. That creates more surface area ...

A handful of other woodpecker species in Wisconsin have red on their heads, including the downy woodpecker — which is much smaller than the pileated — and the red-headed woodpecker ...

The red-bellied woodpecker has a creamy-tan colored body with black and white barred wings, and its head is crowned with scarlet plumage, more on the male than the female. The northern flicker is ...

Others, such as the downy woodpecker, are almost identical -- the only distinctive field mark being a small red patch on the back of the head, which the male has but the female does not.

The notion that the woodpecker head primarily needs to be a functional hammer made sense to me. From reading the literature, it appeared to me that cranial shock absorption has never been ...

Compare with the golden-fronted woodpecker, which has solid black central rectrices, lacks pink or red on the belly, and has a different pattern of color on the head. In breeding season ...

A shock absorber inspired by the bird’s ability to withstand severe deceleration. A woodpecker’s head experiences decelerations of 1200g as it drums on a tree at up to 22 times per second.