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The family's taxonomy is unsettled; the Clements taxonomy lists 235 species [2] and BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World lists 254 [3]. This list is presented according to the IOC taxonomic sequence and can also be sorted alphabetically by common name and binomial.
The largest surviving species is the great slaty woodpecker, which weighs 430 g (15 oz) on average and up to 563 g (19.9 oz), and measures 45 to 55 cm (18 to 22 in), but the extinct imperial woodpecker, at 55 to 61 cm (22 to 24 in), and ivory-billed woodpecker, around 48 to 53 cm (19 to 21 in) and 516 g (18.2 oz), were probably both larger.
Original – Red-crowned woodpecker (Melanerpes rubricapillus) male, Reserva ProAves Las Tángaras, Chocó Department, Colombia Reason High quality image. Adds value to article. FP on Commons. Articles in which this image appears Red-crowned woodpecker FP category for this image Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Animals/Birds Creator Charlesjsharp
Like other woodpeckers, insects form a large part of the diet, being caught on the wing in some species, but fruit is also eaten in large quantities and some species consume sap. They all nest in holes that they excavate in trees, and the red-crowned woodpecker and the Hoffmann's woodpecker are unusual in that they sometimes enter their holes ...
Lewis's woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) is a large North American species of woodpecker which ornithologist Alexander Wilson named after Meriwether Lewis, one of the explorers who surveyed the areas bought by the United States of America as part of the Louisiana Purchase and first described this species of bird.
Nine families of largely arboreal birds make up the order Piciformes / ˈ p ɪ s ɪ f ɔːr m iː z /, the best-known of them being the Picidae, which includes the woodpeckers and close relatives. The Piciformes contain about 71 living genera with a little over 450 species , of which the Picidae make up about half.
With common bird populations on the decline, these birds are “the canary in the coal mine,” said Ken Rosenberg, an applied conservation scientist emeritus at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology ...
Picus was a figure in Roman mythology, the first king of Latium who was changed into a woodpecker by the sorceress Circe. [3] Of the 13 species in the genus listed by Linnaeus, the English naturalist William Swainson designated the European green woodpecker ( Picus viridis ) as the type species .