Beaks & Bills - Part 3

Continuing in my series on beaks and bills, we are going to take a quick look at woodpeckers and pelicans today.

Woodpeckers obviously have specialized beaks.  They are short, strong, and chisel-shaped - perfect for pecking holes in trees.  They also use these tapered beaks to get  into and under the tree bark in order to find insects to eat.

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers, who are in the woodpecker family, use their beaks to "drill" holes into trees until they can get to the sap running underneath.  Rather than sucking up the sap, as their name erroneously implies, they lap up the sap with their tongues.  (For a picture of their handiwork, go to this previous post:of mine, "Evidence of Wild Animals" and look at the last photo in the post, here:   http://foundonthetrail.blogspot.com/search/label/Amphibians .)
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Compare those little beaks to the relatively enormous beaks of pelicans.  Pelican beaks have a flexible lower portion that can stretch and contract.  Look at the difference in beaks between these two pelicns in this picture below:

The lower bird has its beak neatly "folded", while the upper bird has just finished dipping his beak into the water, which is how they fish.  They scoop up fish and water - up to three gallons at a time.  The water drains out and the fish remain.