One of our Twitter friends @birdchick shared this insightful Gizmodo post that answers the eternal birder question: do Woodpeckers get brain damage from all their pecking?

Apparently they don't:

Fan Yubo and his team at the Key Laboratory for Biomechanics and Mechanobiology at Beihang University in China ... spent three years studying the mechanical properties, microstructure and composition of the cranial bone and beak of the woodpecker, and compared it to that of the lark. They found that woodpeckers have developed their own amazing nanofabrication and self assembly capabilities in their cranial bone structure over millions of years of evolution.

The strength of the two types of birds' beaks is actually similar. But the woodpecker's cranial bone is much stronger than the lark's, the researchers found. That's thanks to having more "plate-like spongy bone" in its cranium, which makes it resistant to deformation. Specifically, it has a larger volume of structures called trabeculae, which are tiny spaces in the bone that form a mesh filled with bone marrow. The woodpecker's trabeculae are also spaced very close together, which helps diffuse impact. In the image, the woodpecker cranium bone is A; the lark's is B. C is the woodpecker's beak, D is the lark's.

To read this post in full and to look at Woodpecker brain scans (who wouldn't want to look at that?) visit http://gizmodo.com/5899857/how-a-woodpecker-doesnt-get-brain-damage.

(Photo of UC Davis ophthalmology professor Ivan Schwab courtesy of UC Davis and totally unrelated to story, just a funny picture that shows up when you search "headbanging woodpecker")