Faye Johnson,    age 11, of Rockford, Illinois, for her question:

Does a woodpecker spear his food?

The woodpecker's favorite snack is a wormy grub, living in a secret burrow under the bark of a tree. The busy bird has an extra strong beak to chisel holes into the wood. But he does not use his beak to spear out his dinner. If he stabbed the grub through the middle, he could not open his beak to eat it. It is quite a problem to pry the tasty morsel out, but the woodpecker has a most ingenious method to do the trick with his tongue.

Everybody loves the woodpecker, except perhaps a few orchard farmers. The noise of his busy hammering rolls through the woods like a drum and watching him at work is a rare. treat. His hard, sharp bill stabs so fast that his bobbing head looks like a hazy blur. Surely, you think, the handsome little bird will give himself a terrible headache. Not at all. His neck muscles are extra strong to drive those hammering blows without strain    and the bones of his skull are extra thick to absorb the shuddering shocks.

You also wonder how he manages to hold onto the vertical side of a tree in an upright position. That is no problem either. The four toes on his strong feet point

out in an "X" shape. He holds on so securely with four strong, hooked claws    two pointing forward and two backward. Those feet hold his chest close to the tree. His stiff tail feathers spread out and press down his lower back. This leaves his bony head and mighty neck muscles free to whack away like a triphammer.

He may be chiseling out a bedroom or perhaps a nest in the wood. But most likely he is just digging for dinner. A tree is a sort of apartment house for a wide assort¬ment of tenants. Many kinds of grubs, worms and insects live in and under the bark and others dig    themselves burrows right in the wood. The woodpecker jabs and jabs until he finds a likely hiding place. Naturallly the victim is reluctant to leave his secret burrow    and the woodpecker has to probe him out.

For this delicate job he uses his tongue    and what a remarkable tongue it is. When he thrusts it out, it seems extra long. This is because the back of the tongue is fixed to an amazing contraption called the hyoid. From his tongue, two bony  ligaments reach back under his jaw, loop over his bony skull, down his forehead and anchor themselves in his right nostril. Breathing is limited to the left nostril, but the hyoid is worth the sacrifice. When the woodpecker snakes out his tongue, the hyoid ligaments slide around his skull and enable him to reach an extra inch or more. The tip of his tongue has barbs, or soft prongs, that point backward. When he touches a soft grub, these barbs help him to get a grip on it and pull the little morsel out for a snack. The snaky probing, scooping and swallowing is done in a moment    and the next moment the woodpecker resumes hammering for a second helping.

The world is blessed with more than 200 species of woodpecker. Most of them wear eye catching plumage and scarlet caps. Mrs. Woodpecker is less gaudy    and rather a neglectful mother. Most of the child care duties are done by her husband. And, in the bird world, Mr. Woodpecker deserves to be voted Father of the Year.