April 18, 2010 - Tree Pounders

Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

A staccato rap-tap-tapping echoes through the spring woodland as a woodpecker advertises its presence by drumming against a resonant tree. Unlike songbirds, woodpeckers don’t sing to attract a mate. Although they do make vocal sounds, these feathered jackhammers pound against a tree as their primary means of communication during breeding season. Even female woodpeckers drum. Different species of woodpeckers have a distinctive drumming pattern. Our common downy woodpeckers drum at a rate slow enough that you can almost count the taps. Northern flickers, on the other hand, drum at a rapid rate. Once paired up, most woodpeckers stop drumming. Until then our woods echo with tree pounding.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.