Woodpeckers get their food primarily by boring holes into trees to find insects and other invertebrates living under bark and inside wood. They use their strong, chisel-like beaks to excavate wood and then extract insects with their long, sticky, barbed tongues. They also use auditory cues to detect movement of prey inside wood before drilling. Besides insects, woodpeckers may eat fruit, nuts, seeds, tree sap, bird eggs, small animals, and even carrion depending on availability and species. Some woodpeckers, like sapsuckers, drill wells in trees to access sap and consume both the sap and insects attracted to it. Others, like the Acorn Woodpecker, cache food such as acorns by storing them in tree crevices for later use. Their diet and foraging techniques are seasonally adaptive and diverse, including flycatching and ground foraging in some species.
