A month or so ago my husband came to me in a state of excitement wanting to know more about the claws that woodpeckers have on their wings. I had to confess that I knew nothing about claws on woodpecker wings. He claimed that he had just read in our great bathroom book that woodpeckers have claws on their wings, and he had a great vision of these woodpeckers using the claws to climb around on trees, something like ice-climbers use their picks I suppose.

So, we looked this up, and found no references on the internet to woodpeckers with claws on their wings. A closer inspection of the great bathroom book found a somewhat poorly written sentence that could lead one to interpret that woodpeckers have this fantastic property, but the author was just talking about some aspect of the bird’s claws. We were both a bit disappointed.

And so it was with great happiness that I came across this exhibit in the Natural History Museum in London on the backside of an old Victorian exhibition case. I was just trying to get out of the great stream of children pouring through the bird hall before I got pulled into the current myself. (Never go to the Natural History Museum on a school holiday. I believe every person under 12 years old on the island was in the museum that day.) There are birds with claws on their wings!

In fact, they can have either claws, or spurs, or spikes or clubs, depending on the nature of the thing. You can read an excellent article on the phenomenon here.