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Journalism of Courage
There is such a joyous lunacy in the ringing laugh of the black-rumped flameback (nee golden-backed woodpecker) that it can infect you with a reckless state of derring-do and put a silly grin on your face, even at five o’clock in the morning! Imagine, this bird with its beautiful bullion back and bottlebrush scarlet crest has greeted the new day by hammering its head against solid wood, anywhere between 100 and 300 times a minute, and then flies off cackling through the trees – even as you scrabble around to offer it an asprin.
Or else, it will spiral around the trunk of a coconut palm and play peekaboo with you, its eyes bright and sparkling. Often pairs do this: hitching their way up or down the trunk while corkscrewing around it, drumming their coded messages to each other. They have to pause frequently, because all that banging heats up their heads, and also gives them pause to listen out for the panic-stricken scurrying of beetles and grubs within the bark, on which they breakfast.
To spend much of your life hammering on solid wood and not suffering from a migraine or concussion obviously means that your head has been pretty specially equipped. The spiky chisel-like bill of the woodpecker is strong, and its skull is ingeniously designed to absorb the energy of all that head-banging. The beak is made of three sections: an outer keratin sheath which has a scale-like arrangement, in which the scale edges are arranged in a zigzag fashion so as to absorb and spread the impact. This gives way to a layer of spongy bone, which, in turn, gives way to an inner layer of hard bone. The keratin scales slide above and below each other (rather like continental plates, I would imagine), dissipating the energy. The skull itself consists of a fretwork of spongy bone, which further absorbs impact energy and tightly packs around the small brain to prevent it from jerking around during impact. Further, the extremely long tongue bone (called the hyoid bone) wraps around the skull like a seat belt, providing even more protection. A nictitating membrane in the eye comes down like a shutter a millisecond before impact to prevent the eyeball from popping out during impact! Thanks to all this protection, over 98 per cent of the energy of impact is absorbed by the woodpecker’s body, rather than its head.
We’re so impressed by the shock absorbing ability of the woodpecker’s head that we’re using some of its features in designing the black boxes carried by aircraft, as well as crash helmets. Woodpeckers hammer on tree trunks and boughs to prise out insects in the bark – their tongues are sticky and barbed and flick out the insects. They also chisel holes in order to roost and nest. Holes in tree trunks and branches are hot property sites for many species of birds – barbets, hoopoes, owls, et al — and competition can be fierce.
Once on the North Delhi Ridge I watched a coppersmith barbet diligently excavate a neat and perfectly circular hole in a tree, and decided to keep a watch on it. The following week, I saw that a black-rumped flameback had turfed out the original builder and was now embellishing and enlarging the hole for itself. The following week, a swarm of bees had taken possession of the residence – and well that was that!
Drumming is also a mode of communication for woodpeckers, a kind of Morse code, with each species having its own particular encrypted code: The number of beats in a roll, the frequency with which they are made, the time interval between drum-rolls are all vital for deciphering the message: whether it is a territorial call, an alarm call or simply a bird declaiming ‘I love you!’
To help them spiral up vertical tree trunks, woodpeckers have strong legs, feet and claws. Of their four claws, two point forward and two (the outer ones) point backward. Further, their short stiff tails gives them three points of contact at all times – a cardinal rule for all climbers going up vertical inclines!
By and large, woodpeckers are monogamous: four to five round white eggs are laid in the hole and both parents look after the brood. Mostly, they are woodland and forest-dwelling birds, and apart from insects and grubs, may even come down to bird feeders in parks and partake of whatever is on offer – breadcrumbs, namkeen, et al. They may join mixed feeding parties in the trees too, keeping to the outer regions: there is safety in numbers here. Usually, they are solitary birds or live in pairs – and some also seem to have very regular schedules. In Goa recently, I watched a pair of black-rumped flamebacks arriving virtually the same time every day for an entire fortnight, scouting up and down a tall coconut palm tree in their search for grubs.
There are around 30 species of woodpeckers in India – the smallest of them being the tiny-tot speckled piculet (10cm) which I once saw clinging upside down on a branch in Palampur, in Himachal, years ago and the Great slaty which is the largest (51 cm).
Walk through a hushed pine forest in the hills and you are likely to hear the mysterious drumming of a woodpecker echoing from somewhere amidst the trees. Then, a pause, followed by another drum-roll from some distance away: like the tom-tomming of tribal drums. Oh yes, from somewhere high up, a pair of bright eyes is watching you — and just maybe its owner wants to play peekaboo!
