Woodpeckers drill timber almost everywhere except Australasia and Madagascar
Woodpeckers, piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers form family Picidae within Piciformes, absent from Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, and Madagascar. Drumming and chiseling mostly expose insect prey in wood and carve nest cavities. The bar-breasted piculet can be about 7.5 cm and under 9 g.
About 240 species in 35 genera make up Picidae, which takes in piculets, wrynecks and sapsuckers as well as true woodpeckers. It is one of nine living families in the order Piciformes, alongside barbets, toucans, honeyguides, jacamars and puffbirds. The family spans almost the whole globe, missing only Australasia, Madagascar and the polar extremes, and reaches peak diversity in tropical rainforest. A few species have left trees behind: the Gila woodpecker nests in cacti, and South Africa's ground woodpecker digs its nest holes in the earth.
Hammering wood at decelerations around 1,000 g calls for serious engineering. The bill has three layers, a keratin sheath over porous and dense bone, and its chisel tip is honed by use. A remarkably long hyoid bone splits, runs around the skull and ends in the right nostril, acting like a seat belt. The brain is small, smooth and snugly packed with little fluid, and simulations suggest 99.7% of the impact energy is stored as strain in the body rather than reaching the brain. Birds peck in short bursts partly to let the skull cool, and a thickened third eyelid snaps shut a millisecond before each strike.
Zygodactyl feet, two toes forward and two back, plus a stiffened tail brace the bird on vertical trunks, though three-toed species manage with one fewer. A long barbed tongue does not spear grubs, as once thought; studies in 2004 showed it wraps around prey and pulls it out. Drumming doubles as long-distance communication, and abandoned nest holes become homes for other cavity nesters.
Sizes run from the bar-breasted piculet, 7.5 cm and 8.9 g, to the great slaty woodpecker at up to 55 cm and 563 g. The larger imperial and ivory-billed woodpeckers are generally considered extinct, although the IUCN still listed both as critically endangered in April 2026, and nearly 20 species face habitat threats. In Switzerland, several species grew in number between 1990 and 2008 as the amount of dead wood in forests rose.
Source: Woodpecker
