33. Cardinal Woodpecker Here is another bird more often heard than seen; not so much by its call but by the tap-tap-tapping it makes drilling into trees, usually resonating dead branches that offer accommodation to many different kinds of boring insects. Some wood-peckers actually communicate by their drumming on trees, largely I imagine to warn off any other woodpecker encroaching on their territory. I don’t know how developed this is in the case of our Cardinal, but I am sure that his tapping must alert other woodpeckers to his presence. Their bills are sharp and robust, but you can get a headache just watching them going at a tree with that chisel-like bill aimed and angled with wonderfully business-like precision; you can see the energy and muscular thrust in its whole body to get maximum power into neck and head and thence into each blow. Their skulls are specially reinforced to protect the brain, the equivalent of a workman’s helmet worn beneath the skin. Their toes are arranged two facing forward and two facing back, to enable them to get a good grip, which they also need; and the stiff feathers of their tail provide a third leg for the tripod. Birds of AFRICAMA House 70 Birds of AFRICAMA House 71