This is Bird Note.

An expert wood carver is hard at work, preparing a picnic.

This pilliated woodpecker is hammering its massive chisel of a bill against the trunk

of a cedar tree, making large rectangular incisions some nearly a foot long.

Inside, if she's lucky, are thousands of delicious black carpenter ants.

And this woodpecker is perfectly equipped to harvest the treasure she's uncovered.

She has a sticky tongue that's more than five inches long, that she stretches into the trunk,

lapping up hundreds of ants and swallowing them whole.

Ants make up more than half of her diet.

Woodpeckers, as a group, eat far more ants than most other birds do.

Many other vertebrates tend to avoid ants because of their stings,

or because of the noxious chemicals they contain, like formic acid.

Another member of the woodpecker family, the northern flicker,

is known to have ingested over 5,000 ants in one sitting.

So while the pilliated woodpecker and northern flicker will eat lots of different kinds of insects and berries,

there's nothing quite like a feast of ants.

For Bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.