“I have been observing this pair of mother and chick Sunda Pygmy Woodpeckers (Dendrocopos moluccensis) behavoir on their last two days around my apartment. Before that the mother was feeding the chick as usual, and the chick would follow the mother very closely until the last moments when the mother decided that the chick should go out on its own and fend for himself.
“You would notice the change in behaviour of the mother towards the chick in the video below. The mother would refuse to feed the chick, with the chick screaming to be fed. It was so loud that the chick’s frantic calls could be heard from inside my apartment. The mother would threaten to peck at the chick, it would also bump violently onto to the chick trying to shoo away the chick. So such is life in nature.
“Now there is also another amazing aspect of this feeding female you would notice in the video, the bird does not pause to find the prey that it is looking for, so how does her tactile sensors called Herbat corpuscles work? I know for sure that other bigger woodpeckers would probe the crevices below the bark after they have removed the top bark layer with their bills, their tongue which has a spear like head which is used to spear the grubs that they are looking for. And for doing that they do sometimes get into trouble like my article some time back where the woodpecker could not extricate itself from the crevice after spearing something? And died hanging from the branch.
“So now the pair has left the trees in front of my apartment not to be heard again, maybe next time when the female decides to make a nest again.
KC Tsang
Singapore
3rd October 2012
