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Woodpeckers |
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Diet
Red-bellied woodpeckers are omnivorous. They eat a wide variety of
fruits, nuts, seeds, berries and tree sap, as well as arboreal arthropods
and other invertebrates. These include ants, flies, grasshoppers, beetle
larvae and caterpillars. Red-bellied woodpeckers also take small
vertebrates, including brown and green anoles, tree frogs, small fish,
nestling birds and bird eggs.
Gleaning, probing, excavating, pecking, bark scaling, and hawking are all methods used by red-bellied woodpeckers to forage for food. Once captured, small food is consumed by swallowing it whole. Large prey is thrashed against a tree and pecked at. An interesting feeding adaptation of red-bellied woodpeckers is their tongue. Their tongue is long, cylindrical, pointed, sticky, and has a spear-like tip. It is well adapted for excavating prey from cracks. Red-bellied woodpeckers forage primarily on the trunks and limbs of trees and snags. Studies have shown that males and females forage differently. Males forage primarily on trunks, while females forage primarily on tree limbs. Females also forage higher on the trees than males. Red-bellied woodpeckers are known to store extra food for later consumption. Food items such as nuts, acorns, corn, fruits, seeds and insects are stored deep in pre-existing cracks and crevices of trees or posts. ("Chipper Woods Bird Observatory: Red Bellied Woodpecker", 2001; Shackelford, Brown, and Conner, 2000) |