Neither the throbbing of the drums of the Djama al Fanaa of Marrakech nor the dhammal dhol of Shah Jamal’s shrine in Lahore, the 5 am drumming reaches our ears in our Gilgit bedroom.

It is our resident, scaly-bellied woodpecker that perches vertically on our bathroom window and drums out his music almost every morning. The tinted glass provides a one-way view of the woodpecker that taps out a code for others to hear. The narrow windowpanes seem to be his tympanum of choice, as they resonate with just the frequency he prefers for his music-making - for the woodpeckers are a family known not so much for their sung music as for their drumming.

Our Gilgit woodpecker is a large, green bird of a very distinct family of birds called the Picidae. The scaly-bellied woodpecker, or the Katth Phootta, as it is known in Urdu, is a forest bird whose wide-ranging habitat includes the Indian subcontinent and adjoining regions of Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal and Turkmenistan. It doesn’t really have scales on its belly, as I can tell standing no more than five inches from its tummy with glass dividing us. Rather its feathers are streaked all down its breast, right to its short, stumpy forked tail. We know ours is the male because of his distinct red crown and, of course, his drumming which is preponderant in the male as a territorial call.

What our woodpecker is actually doing, drumming our window at 5 am, is not quite as absurd as it might sound. His drumming is a form of communication used by members of his species. It involves his large bill being repeatedly struck on a hard surface with great rapidity. It allows recognition by mates and plays a part in courtship rituals and territorial marking. It is thought that his mate is able to distinguish his drumming and that of other neighbouring woodpecker individuals.

As his astonishing drumming proceeds, he pauses every so often, then repeats the drum roll, forming a unique pattern in the number of beats in the roll, the length of the roll and the gap between rolls as well as the cadence in the sequence of the rhythm. We have not yet counted out his drum roll because of its sheer rapidity, apart from the fact that 5 am is a hard time to count out beats of a drum no matter how alluring they are meant to be.

Next time we are awakened by the distinctive noise at the crack of dawn, we shall be sure to appreciate all that goes into the unique sound and know that it is music made by a special sort of drummer.

In addition to drumming, the life of the woodpecker, true to its name, relies on hammering holes in the wood of trunks and branches to find insects and grubs to eat and make cavities in which to nest. For its excavating works, it seems truly fit for purpose – functions which humans have copied through an approach called bio-mimicry.

The drumming and hammering of the woodpecker’s bill are so extensive that its anatomy seems especially geared to prevent mechanical damage to the brain. The woodpecker’s skull is made of sponge-like bone that is strong but compressible, concentrated in the forehead and the back of the skull to prevent shock to the brain. And if this were not adequate protection, the tongue-bone is so excessively long that it winds around the skull through a special cavity, split into two to embrace the spinal cord, then over the skull to close the loop by converging neatly into the right nostril. Mechanical stress in the beak is thereby dispersed and the woodpecker lives out its hammering vocation free of the enormous strains of its lifestyle.

A close human study of these woodpecker anatomies has inspired engineers to mimic their special features for use in human devices called bio-mimicry. Aeroplane black boxes that need to survive intact should a plane fall from the sky, have been modified to resist damage by sixty-fold using principles inspired by woodpecker anatomy. Protective helmets are also influenced by the study of woodpeckers.

Another peculiarity of this family of birds is their vertical posture. Their foot arrangement consists of four toes, the first and fourth facing backwards, while the second and third face forward. Together with these toes, their short tails have stiffened feathers, so that when the woodpecker perches on a vertical surface, the feet and tail work together to support it.

As our scaly-bellied woodpecker grabs our window’s wooden frame with its toes like pincers, its tail feathers make contact with the glass pane to stabilize the bird like a three-legged stool. This allows the bird to walk vertically up tree trunks while foraging for food and making its excavated nests.

Woodpeckers are considered very beneficial birds for the health of forests. They eat predatory insects that damage trees and engineer holes in trunks, that once abandoned by them, are reused by other creatures in need of shelter, especially those lacking in the specialist anatomies of our drumming and hammering bird.

Next time we are awakened by the distinctive noise at the crack of dawn, we shall be sure to appreciate all that goes into the unique sound and know that it is music made by a special sort of drummer.

The writer is a Lahore-based ecologist.