The tips of their tongues are coated with sticky saliva and are barbed to help extract and hold prey. Sapsucker tongues are shorter, with fine hairlike tips for gathering sap. There are more than 20 species of woodpeckers in North America. The red-cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species, was once abundant in Southeast pine forests, from New Jersey to Florida and west to Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Texas. The loss of mature pine forests to timber harvesting and agriculture has restricted the red-cockaded woodpecker to about 1 percent of its historical range, from Virginia to Florida and west to southeast Oklahoma and eastern Texas.
Males often have red or yellow on their heads.
In most species, flight is usually undulating, with wings folded against the body after each burst of flaps. Woodpeckers have characteristic calls, but they also use a rhythmic pecking sequence, referred to as drumming, as a method of signaling or communicating. Drumming establishes woodpecker territories and attracts mates, and is generally done on resonant dead tree trunks or limbs. Buildings, utility poles, metal gutters, downspouts, and chimney caps may also serve as drumming sites. While drumming causes little damage, other than possible paint removal on metal surfaces, it may often be heard throughout a house.