woodpeckers

The drumming you hear outside your cottage window each morning could be a lot more complicated than initially thought. Woodpeckers, as it turns out, share a specialized brain region with vocal learners, a new study has found. Vocal learning is the ability to modify sounds through imitation and interactions with other individuals. The best example is humans learning to speak. We can learn and vocalise new words and sounds based off of hearing others speak.

The ability is rare. Only five mammal species are capable of vocal learning, including humans, elephants, and bats, and only three lineages of birds: songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds. But now woodpeckers may join the list.

Woodpeckers can often be heard drumming their beaks on trees and metal surfaces, such as tin roofs and gutters. This is a different type of drumming than the one used to drill for insects or excavate nest cavities. This drumming is more rhythmic and can change frequencies. Woodpeckers use this drumming to communicate behaviour, most often attracting mates or negotiating territorial interactions with other woodpeckers, similar to the way some species use birdsong.

Woodpeckers will increase the speed of their drumming and the length of the beats to display a threat to competitors. In response, the competitors may try to match the tempo of the drumming. A woodpecker’s drumming is also thought to reveal individual identities. Woodpeckers can identify familiar birds versus ones they’ve never encountered before by the rhythm of the drumming.

To uncover this capacity for vocal learning, researchers examined the brains of seven bird species: a hawk, turaco, flamingo, penguin, emu, duck, and woodpecker. Researchers were looking for the presence of parvalbumin, a gene found in a cluster of nerve cells, also known as nuclei, in the birds’ forebrains. Most of the birds lacked the gene, but three regions of the woodpecker’s brain showed high parvalbumin activity.

Researchers performed the initial test on a single, male downy woodpecker. To confirm their theory, they tested both male and female brains of multiple woodpecker species, including hairy woodpeckers and red-bellied woodpeckers. All woodpeckers returned signs of the parvalbumin gene.

When drumming or listening to other woodpeckers drumming, these regions of the birds’ brains showed increased parvalbumin activity. This shares a close resemblance to the neurological patterns in songbirds when exhibiting song control. Both require command over complex muscle coordination. The main difference is that parvalbumin contributes to a songbird’s control over its respiratory system and syringeal muscles—emitting sound—whereas researchers theorize that parvalbumin helps control the woodpecker’s neck and head muscles.

One question researchers have yet to answer is how woodpeckers learn these drumming rhythms. Songbirds learn songs at an early age, absorbing the sounds even before they’ve hatched. Researchers theorize that woodpeckers could do the same, or that the birds learn features of drum rhythms through interactions with other species, modifying a drum template they were born with.

“Studies that explore the learned basis of drumming are underway,” the study’s researchers said.

I need suggestions for fast-growing trees for the cottage. I have a row of Swedish columnar aspen that has been eaten and killed by yellow-bellied sapsuckers. What could I replace them with that’s fast-growing but is not favoured by those woodpeckers?—Julie Hink, Beaver Lake, Alta.

We’ll get to your fast-growing trees question later. First: let’s not throw the sapsuckers entirely under the bus. The reason that your trees died could be because Swedish columnars aren’t native to Canada. “Native aspens have been dealing with sapsuckers for thousands of years,” says Chris Earley, the author of Feed the Birds. “They know what they’re doing.” Since your trees probably didn’t evolve with yellow-bellied sapsuckers, it made them weak to this woodpecker’s onslaught; another species could have taken it.

That said, while sapsuckers will drill into “a very long list” of trees, they are particularly fond of aspens, says Earley. So avoid those, and pick another native tree.

Jean-Mathieu Daoust, an arborist with the Calgary office of Bartlett Tree Experts, suggests poplar, American elm, or laurel leaf willow; they’ll grow two feet or more per year. Of course, trees that grow quickly get large quickly. “People say, ‘I want it to grow super-fast! But I don’t want it to get too big!’ ” says Daoust. Follow the tree-planting adage: right tree, right place. For example, you might not want to squash together trees with a wide canopy spread into a spot that suited the skinny aspens. (Columnar trees are column-like.)

Three things to consider when planting a tree

Before you decide on a species, do as much research as you can, says Daoust. You want to get “a true perspective on what impact the selected species will have on the landscape over time.” Talk to local nurseries and arborists; look online; check out images; ask your lake neighbours: which trees have they had success with?

And the sapsuckers? You may have to accept that they’re not going to stop sucking sap. It’s kind of in their job description.

This article originally ran in the August/September 2021 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Got a question for Cottage Q&A? Send it to answers@cottagelife.com.

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