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Woodpecker   /wˈʊdpˌɛkər/   Listen
noun
Woodpecker  n.  (Zool.) Any one of numerous species of scansorial birds belonging to Picus and many allied genera of the family Picidae. Note: These birds have the tail feathers pointed and rigid at the tip to aid in climbing, and a strong chisellike bill with which they are able to drill holes in the bark and wood of trees in search of insect larvae upon which most of the species feed. A few species feed partly upon the sap of trees (see Sap sucker, under Sap), others spend a portion of their time on the ground in search of ants and other insects. The most common European species are the greater spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopus major), the lesser spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopus minor), and the green woodpecker, or yaffle (see Yaffle). The best-known American species are the pileated woodpecker (see under Pileated), the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), which is one of the largest known species, the red-headed woodpecker, or red-head (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), the red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes Carolinus) (see Chab), the superciliary woodpecker (Melanerpes superciliaris), the hairy woodpecker (Dryobates villosus), the downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens), the three-toed, woodpecker (Picoides Americanus), the golden-winged woodpecker (see Flicker), and the sap suckers. See also Carpintero.
Woodpecker hornbill (Zool.), a black and white Asiatic hornbill (Buceros pica) which resembles a woodpecker in color.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Woodpecker" Quotes from Famous Books



... Saint said this when the little old woman went straight up the chimney, and came out at the top changed into a red-headed woodpecker ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... the last word before she was turned into a great black woodpecker, or Gertrude's bird, and flew from her kneading- trough right up the chimney; and till this very day you may see her flying about, with her red mutch on her head, and her body all black, because of the soot in the chimney; and ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... of the parsley-bed, in which little strangers are discovered, is perhaps, "A remnant of a fuller tradition, like that of the woodpecker among the Romans, and that of the stork among our Continental kinsmen."[21] Both these birds having had a mystic celebrity, the former as the fire-singing bird and guardian genius of children, the latter as the baby-bringer.[22] In Saterland it is said "infants are fetched ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... much to have some birds' eggs from the North. I send a list of eggs which have all been found in the Georgia woods: jaybird, cat-bird, sap-sucker, thrush (two kinds), redbird, bluebird, wren (different kinds), mocking-bird, woodpecker, partridge, bee-martin, and several kinds of sparrows. Any of these I would like to exchange for ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... in their translucent beauty. There, also, he would wade into the swamps around a certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped by the earliest woodpecker, whose drumming throbbed through the young man's deep and ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner


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