Common Birds 65 - Hairy Woodpeckers

Wednesday, February 21

Poor woodpeckers.

Earlier today, I watched enraptured as four nuthatches poured over the tree trunks by the creek. Now, I’m watching a hairy woodpecker as it sizes up a fallen tree, bold black and white with a red cap, thinking, huh, pretty neat.  

We used to believe the most incredible things about woodpeckers. It’s long been a mystery as to how they can repeatedly slam their heads into trees and not get concussions. Force is mass times acceleration, so we figured they had some shock absorption to decrease acceleration and thus decrease force. Somehow, we were convinced their tongues were doing the deceleration, long tongues which wrapped around and cradled the brain as their skulls came to a sudden stop. 

Sadly, this is wrong. I don’t actually know if woodpecker tongues wrap around their brains or not. I’m no ornithologist, but if their tongues don’t wrap around their brains it would only take one or two woodpecker bodies to figure that out. So maybe they do have weird, long tongues which wrap around their brains, but they don’t have anything to do with not getting concussions. Instead of changing the acceleration part of the equation, woodpeckers change the mass part of the equation. They just have tiny brains. 

But maybe in a year or decade we’ll find out we’re wrong again and the reason that woodpeckers don’t get concussions is really cool. Or maybe the boring answer is the right answer. God only knows. But He loves woodpeckers, so I’m going to work on loving them, too. He makes good rain fall on the just and unjust, nuthatches and woodpeckers. I’m probably going to still love nuthatches more, knowing me, but blessedly love is not diminished by giving.