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woodpecker

UK/ˈwʊdˌpɛkə/US/ˈwʊdˌpɛkɚ/
nounB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,406 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: woodpeckers

A woodpecker is a bird that hammers holes in trees with its beak. A green woodpecker, the woodpecker drummed, hear a woodpecker.

It survives the hammering because the skull is built to absorb it and the tongue wraps right round the brain case. The drumming is a territorial call rather than feeding, and each species has its own rhythm. The tongue is barbed to hook grubs out.

Joshlaymon · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of woodpecker

  1. 1nounwoodpeckerA bird that hammers holes in trees with its beak.B1+

    “A woodpecker had made a neat round hole in the old oak tree.”

woodpecker is a bird.

Where it comes from

Wood plus pecker. Older English names for the bird included woodhack and speight.

From wood + pecker. From wood + pecker. Compare Middle English wod spek (“woodpecker”), Middle English wodehake (“woodpecker”), Middle English wodewale (“woodpecker”). speight.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

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woodpecker in the wild

  • The lesser spotted woodpecker (Dryobates minor) is a member of the woodpecker family Picidae.

    Lesser spotted woodpecker

  • The European green woodpecker spends much of its time feeding on ants on the ground and does not often 'drum' on trees like other woodpecker species.

    European green woodpecker

  • The black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) is a large woodpecker that lives in mature forests across the northern Palearctic.

    Black woodpecker

  • The pileated woodpecker ( PY-lee-ay-tid, PIL-ee-; Dryocopus pileatus) is a large, crow-sized woodpecker with a prominent red crest, white neck stripe, and a mostly black body.

    Pileated woodpecker

  • The hairy woodpecker (Leuconotopicus villosus) is a medium-sized woodpecker that is found over a large area of North America.

    Hairy woodpecker

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.