Woodpeckers are a real pain to catch in a mistnet. It's not that their bite particularly hurts - though you do need to try to prevent them from pecking you, because a woodpecker peck is powerful! No, it's because of their tongues. Woodpecker tongues have backwards-facing spines that are great for digging bugs out of trees, and these spines get wrapped up in the net pretty badly. A bird's tongue can get pulled out by a net, and it won't be able to eat after that and will soon die. This woodpecker's tongue did indeed get caught in my net, and I ended up cutting the net to free it. Cutting nets sucks (they're kind of pricey) but I'd rather lose a net than a bird.
5 comments:
I never thought about how rapidly you might go through seemingly durable equipment such as nets just carrying out your research in a caring way. Lots of cranky birds lately, but at least they're still flying and so's your research, it seems!
How cool looking! But it looks like a red-headcd, not red-bellied, bird!
(I'm trying to learn how to recognize some bird songs, by the way, since it is sad that I can't really name any of the CA birds around here. So far I've decided that we only have mockingbirds. They're like the car alarms of the bird world, just cycling through the same few calls over and over.)
Yeah, sometimes bird names can seem really strange. The red on the belly is extremely faint, but it's there, and I think it's the only woodpecker with any red on the belly and so that's the name it got. It's one of the few things distinguishing it from several similar woodpeckers. The actual Red-headed Woodpecker is unmistakable though - it looks like someone dipped its whole head into red paint!
I am terrible at bird calls! I wish I knew more of them.
You know - you have a really cool job!! How awesome is it to catch birds? Keep the pics coming!
THANK YOU! You just identified the birds in my backyard that I've been trying to identify for weeks.
;-)
Post a Comment