Is it a Hairy or a Downy Woodpecker?

While exploring the woods at CWES, you are bound to encounter several woodpeckers. The most common are hairy and downy woodpeckers, but how do you tell them apart?

• Beaks: A downy woodpecker has a beak that is shorter than the width of its head. A hairy woodpecker has a beak that is about as long as the width of its head. 
• Size: The hairy woodpecker is about 1/3 longer than the downy and weighs almost 3 times as much!
• Location: Downy woodpeckers usually stick to smaller branches and hairy woodpeckers to the trunk.

Did you know? The bristly feathers around a woodpecker's nostrils keep them from breathing in sawdust.

Learn more: Project Feederwatch

Hear a downy woodpecker call and drum

Amazing Mosses

Mosses are found on many of the rocks and trees at CWES. They are soft and springy to the touch. Mosses are very simple plants with no roots or vascular systems (the tubes that move water and nutrients throughout plants like trees). Instead, mosses are able to absorb water and nutrients from the atmosphere. Because of this, they don't grow well in polluted air. Like other plants, mosses have tiny leaves and are able to photosynthesize. Mosses can grow in temperatures just above freezing. They remain green in winter, but do not grow or photosynthesize.

Mosses reproduce with tiny spores found inside little capsules at the end of hair-thin stalks. In some mosses, as the capsules dry out and shrink over time they trap gas inside them. Eventually the pressure in the capsule increases until it pops open and releases a cloud of spores. If a spore lands in the right spot, it can create a new moss. New mosses can also grow from broken off leaves. This is called vegetative reproduction.

Because mosses need water to fertilize and produce their spores, they are found most often in cool, damp areas. This is where the "moss only grows on the North side of trees" myth comes from. There's some truth to this, because this side of the tree is usually more shaded and damper than the others. However, if a tree is shaded by other trees, then moss will happily grow on every side of the tree.

Did you know? Some mosses like sphagnum moss can absorb 20 times their weight in water. This made them perfect for use as diapers by early peoples and as dressings for wounds in WWII.

Learn more: The Hidden Forest

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The Clubmosses

Clubmosses have a misleading name. They aren't actually a moss, they are more related to the fern family. This is because they are a vascular plant, and mosses are not. Clubmosses often creep along the ground and stay green year-round, so they've been nicknamed "ground pine." They reproduce using spores in late summer. Their spores are very flammable and were once used in fireworks. About 300 million years ago this type of plant would have been the size of a large tree!