Description: English: Dryocopus pileatus (Linnaeus, 1758) - pileated woodpecker in Ohio, USA. (17 January 2019; photo by Mary Ellen St. John Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either. However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets. The pileated woodpecker is distinctive in having black and white plumage with a red-colored head crest. This species is native to all of eastern America, parts of far-western America, and parts of Canada. These birds are principally insectivores and frugivores. Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Piciformes, Picidae Locality: western side of Newark, Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA See info. at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pileated_woodpecker. Date: 17 January 2019, 13:51:05. Source:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/47445767@N05/31840088527/. Author: James St. John.