By Steve Gilliland

Whether it’s fishing along a deserted stretch of riverbank, or attempting to sit motionless and silently under a tree or bush awaiting a spring gobbler, I’ve always noticed that there seems to be an apparent abundance of woodpeckers in the spring. I’m not complaining, mind you as their staccato hammering is a nice percussion addition to nature’s spring symphony. It’s just that I seem to hear so many more of them in spring than any other time of the year. Well, I believe I’ve found the answer to my question, and here’s a little “woodpecker 101” to boot.

Woodpeckers are found everywhere on the planet except Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar. The largest is the great slaty in Southeast Asia that can grow to 20 inches long, and the smallest are only 3 to 4 inches long and belong to a group from South America called the piculets. Kansas is home to about a dozen species.

Woodpeckers mate for life, and after eggs are laid, both parents help with incubation. They are omnivores, meaning they eat most anything, and their diet includes insects and insect larvae, tree sap, seeds and nuts. Most woodpeckers have long tongues to reach deep into holes to extract insects and larvae. That tongue can be as long as four inches on certain species and when not in use it’s actually stored wrapped around the back of its head in a special sort of pouch between the skin and the skull. Woodpeckers are easy to spot in flight as they have a very different and distinct flight pattern. They flap their wings three times and then glide, then three more flaps, then glide, etc. until they reach their destination; this flight pattern never changes.

I’m sure we’ve all seen woodpeckers hanging vertically from the side of a tree as they dig for insects, and God has specifically designed them for all aspects of that job. The toes of their feet point both forward and backwards to hold them in place, and they have long stiffened tail feathers that prop them up like leaning against the back of a chair. Their beaks are long, slender and uniquely self-sharpening, and the machine-gun-like sound we hear them making as they drill for insects and grubs is known as “drumming.” Woodpeckers brains are protected by special air pockets in their skulls that cushions each blow as they drum, which can be 20 times per second and amount to more than 10, 000 times each day.

I’ve always thought that woodpeckers hammered away on trees and poles solely to search for insects and larvae, but I’ve learned that’s only part of the story. Both male and female woodpeckers drum, and besides digging for food, they drum to excavate den holes in dead trees, which they do anew each year, and since woodpeckers do not have vocal songs, they drum to communicate, and to establish territories and attract mates if they don’t have one. So it all fits that I would hear them more often now in early spring as they prepare new nests, establish their territories and communicate to prospective mates.

Ya’ know, the Kansas outdoors is one huge classroom, and it’s great when I also learn something from what I write. And by the way, this year the most famous woodpecker of all times, Woody, turns 76 years old; that’s a lot of drummin’!

Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!

Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].

By Martin Hawver

The talk is getting a little louder, in this week before first adjournment of the Legislature on Thursday or Friday, that there might just be a special session of the Legislature this June.

Yes, after the month off for Spring Break, the so-called “veto session” of the Legislature is scheduled to start April 27 and if lawmakers hold it to the presumptive 90-day rule (it took 113 days last year), legislators could be free for fund-raising and campaigning by May 18, or maybe a little sooner.

But lawmakers are already wondering whether they can assemble and pass a new school finance law that will satisfy the Kansas Supreme Court’s February ruling that the state is unconstitutionally and unequally distributing funds to local school districts for their Local Option Budgets and capital outlay funds. So far, no bill has been passed that would meet that ruling and prevent the high court from shutting down schools July 1 if its equalization order isn’t met.

Remember 2005? That’s when lawmakers returned for a two-week session (June 22–July 6) to deal with school finance problems identified by the high court.

Oh, and there was that quickie session, in September of 2013, when the Legislature speedily enacted a 50-year minimum sentence for first-degree murder. No real political downside for returning to duty for just a day to get tougher on crime, is there?

But the school finance equity solution is harder and represents a test of power between the Legislature and the Supreme Court, and the court holds another gavel here—shutting down public schools if its order isn’t met.

There are lawmakers who are probably wondering about their vacation/campaign plans if they are called back.

There is also another more politically complicated—can you believe that?—issue looming, the state’s projected budget deficit.

So far it looks like Kansas will be at least $30 million below zero on June 30, the end of the fiscal year, and as monthly revenues trickle in, chances are considered good that the unconstitutional deficit might grow.

Lawmakers might know enough about the future of revenues to meet that necessary budget balance when they return from Spring Break to make some spending shuffles and cuts. It’s too late for any tax increase to be approved in time to raise any new money to balance the budget. That means Gov. Sam Brownback is going to have to find a way—or alternatively, have the opportunity—to balance the budget single-handedly.

The options there aren’t pretty. There’s the freshly passed $100 million late-payment for the state pension fund, or there’s taking more money from the shrinking state highway fund, or…there’s selling off future receipts from the tobacco industry master settlement agreement, essentially a payday loan that will likely lead to a rollback of decades-old services to children and youths of the state.

Or…there’s the point-and-shoot option, where the governor takes money from existing state programs that he doesn’t feel are necessities in a government he would like to shrink in order to meet that $1 budget balance required by June 30 by the state constitution.

Any of those options may—or may not—be reason enough for lawmakers to return to a special session this summer, depending on whether those options draw public outcry that threatens the Republican control of the Legislature for the coming two years—and the final two years of Brownback’s term.

There’s the chance, of course, that the Supreme Court will issue an order saying “never mind.” Or that money floods into the bank in the next few weeks.

H’mmm…that special session is looking more likely than not…

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com