In August 2022, during my visit to Altmannstein - Bavaria, I discovered a green woodpecker male with a young bird in the neighbor's garden.
The green woodpecker is also called ground woodpecker or grass woodpecker. That's because its diet consists almost entirely of ants.
So he hops around longer distances without flying in short jumps on the grassy areas.
The "earth woodpecker" then constantly pecks into the ground with its beak in order to drill into the subterranean channels of the ants. It's amazing the accuracy with which he's doing it.
The green woodpecker then pushes its sticky tongue, which is covered with barbs and is up to 10 cm long, into the ant channels through the small opening it has made in the ground and thus pulls
its food out of the ground. A behavior that can also be seen in the wryneck.
In the video I also processed photos showing the green woodpecker using its tongue. In reality, the use of the tongue is carried out very quickly and can hardly be captured in normal video
recordings. You can also find a selection of photos here.
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