Jason E. Andersen

Bonus fun fact: You can tell a lot about a bird by the shape of it’s tail. Below is a picture that I received in an email asking for help identifying a bird (see picture below!). If you know birds, you can tell that is a very obvious woodpecker tail in the picture. It’s fanned out, showing the sharp points and thick shafts of the feathers. Woodpeckers exert a lot of force when repeatedly ramming their heads into the wood of trees (and sometimes houses). Gripping hard with their feet, they pivot against their stiff tails, allowing them to put a lot of force behind their pecking. The points also dig in to the bark to help them stay firmly in place along the trunk of the tree, like the spikes that tree climbers wear on their boots. Neat! Woodpeckers are incredibly cool. Maybe another time I’ll talk about how their brains don’t turn to mush with all that pecking.