ABSTRACT
Woodpeckers, flickers, and piculets, but not sapsuckers, are South American representatives of the family Picidae, all of which are characterized by chisel-like bills and long tongues used to extract insect prey. All woodpeckers, except piculets, also have stiffened tails that are used to brace themselves against trees and snags when foraging. The generalized and ancestral toe arrangement among Picidae is zygodactylous, but this arrangement has been modified in several different ways among lineages. Picidae molt is fairly well studied in North America, but has been almost completely neglected throughout the Neotropics. Picidae follow a Complex Basic Strategy and the preformative molt is variable among species, although regularly incomplete and sometimes partial. In many woodpeckers, the juvenile plumage is female-like, although in some cases juvenile females, juvenile males, and older females may occasionally or even regularly exhibit adult-male like characteristics such as small amounts of red in the crown.
