Tasty

It was a pretty horrible day, weather-wise: dark, cold, windy, and somehow wet without ever properly raining. I thought about going for a walk, but... got no further than that. I could have given myself a shake and forced myself out of the door, I suppose, but some days are staying in days, and this was one of those.

I was making my umpteenth mug of tea of the morning and wondering about photographing the jug of tulips on the kitchen table, when I glanced out of the kitchen window and saw this Great Spotted Woodpecker on the peanut feeder in the garden. The day's exercise therefore consisted of dashing upstairs to fetch the camera, crashing back down again, and then five minutes of photography t'ai chi - gliding around the kitchen, trying to find the window pane that gave me the clearest view of the woodpecker, while moving slowly and smoothly enough not to attract his attention.

Great Spotted Woodpeckers usually look a bit raddled and unkempt, but this male is so smart I think he can only recently have moulted into fresh plumage. The drumming season has now started, and it probably won't be too long before his underparts are stained brown from contact with tree bark, and his tail feathers are ragged from being constantly tailed across rough surfaces. At the moment though, he looks splendid.

I'm especially pleased to have caught him showing his tongue, because it gives me the chance to repost some information I once spent several hours researching. The Great Spotted Woodpecker's tongue can extend up to 4cm beyond the end of its bill, and at rest it's retracted up and over the bird's skull. If you find this as hard to visualise as I did, I recommend this basic explanation, which uses the American Northern Flicker as an example. I think it's illustrated even better here by Lizzie Harper for a book about British woodpeckers.

A further woodpecker fun fact that's stated on both these pages is that the way the woodpecker's tongue wraps around its skull gives it some protection against the deceleration force it experiences when drumming against or drilling into a tree. The tongue and hyoid appear to act as both seat belt and shock absorber, and along with the fact that some of the woodpecker's skull plates are made of spongier bone than in other birds, this protects it from brain injury.