Great Spotted Woodpecker ( Dendrocopos major )

Juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker.  Rant coming up.  I regularly get annoyed looking at long box for entering the title only to find it won't accept more than 50 characters/keystrokes.  Why oh why make a large box and not allow text to fit it.  Rant over.

The blip is of the first visit this year of a juvenile GSW.  You can tell it is a juvenile by the red crown.  Males have a red nape and females have no red atall.   I chose the blip because it shows one thing about the woodpecker family that is unusual and something about birds you don't normally see unless you happen to catch it on a picture.

The tongue.  Woodpeckers need a long tongue to reach into holes after grubs. So long that the tongue is almost a third of the birds body length.  To manage this evolution has wrapped the tongue round the head, it starts at the nostrils curls over the head and into the mouth.

The third eyelid.  More technically known as the nictitating membrane.  Birds and reptiles have this also a few mammals.  It is a transparent or translucent membrane that can be be brought over the eye without closing the eyelids.  It serves a number of purposes.  It protects the eye from debris dust etc, helps to keep it moist and allows at least partial vision (useful if you are likely to be a prey species).