Species: Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)
Family: Woodpeckers (PICIDAE)
Category: Birds
Location: Widespread
A. Birds
More extensive information on birds can be found in a separate blog post.
B. Woodpeckers (PICIDAE)
There are three members of the woodpecker family usually seen in Britain: the Green Woodpecker, the Great Spotted Woodpecker and the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. Of these, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is the least likely to be seen with only 800 breeding pairs; its status is RED.
Very occasionally, one can also see two other members of the family, the Wryneck and the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, although sightings of the latter are extremely rare in Britain.
C. Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is about the size of a starling (about 22cm long and with a wingspan of about 36cm), whereas the rarer Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is about the size of a Greenfinch, considerably smaller. There are between twenty-five and thirty thousand breeding pairs of these birds in Britain.
These miniature jack-hammers of the bird world have a rapid pecking/hammering style when searching for food (particularly grubs) on tree trunks, with damage to their beak and skulls being prevented by built-in shock absorbing mechanisms. The sound of this beak-drumming is not too dissimilar to the sound made when you bend a ruler held over the side of a table or desk, a rapid succession of beats that decline in intensity. Great Spotted Woodpeckers also have tongues that they can protrude four centimetres beyond the tip of their beaks to retrieve grubs from tunnels in the fibre of timber.
These birds have a distinctive bouncing flight.
Images
Great Spotted Woodpecker
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is about the size of a starling, and there are between twenty-five and thirty thousand breeding pairs of these birds in Britain.
