ONE OF THE great pleasures of winter is listening for drumming woodpeckers. Their loud tattoos ringing out on a frigid, otherwise silent northern landscape fill me with hope that winter will eventually come to an end even as I marvel at the adaptations that allow these splendid birds to slam their faces into solid wood.
Natural selection would obviously favor physiological and morphological modifications protecting woodpeckers from concussions and long-term brain damage. But
