Green Woodpecker

“Woodpecker is the popular name of the old Linnæan genus Picus, now greatly divided. Woodpeckers have a slender body, powerful beak, and protrusile tongue, which is sharp, barbed, and pointed, and covered with a glutinous secretion derived from glands in the throat, this coating being renewed every time the tongue is drawn within the bill. The tail is stiff and serves as a support when the birds are clinging to the branches or stems of trees. Woodpeckers are very widely distributed, but abound chiefly in warm climates. They are solitary in habit, and live in the depths of forests. Fruits, seeds, and insects constitute their food, and in pursuit of the latter they exhibit wonderful dexterity, climbing with astonishing quickness on the trunks and branches of trees, and when, by tapping with their bills, a rotten place has been discovered, they dig vigorously in search of the grubs or larvæ beneath the bark."—(Charles Leonard-Stuart, 1911)

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