Great Spotted Woodpecker

The Great Spotted Woodpecker is about the size of a starling.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Dendrocopos major
Family: 
Woodpeckers
Family Latin name: 
PICIDAE
Category: 
Birds

Species description

Species description

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.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is about the size of a starling.

Details

Species family information

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.

Category information

The earliest feathered dinosaur fossils date from the early Cretaceous, but the ancestry of birds goes further back to Jurassic theropod dinosaurs, which shared a common ancestor with the crocodilians. Well known theropod groups include the tyrannosaurs, allosaurs, and other carnivores. Of surviving bird groups, the most ancient are the ratites (ostriches, rheas, tinamous, moas, kiwis, cassowaries, and emus), followed in evolutionary order by the waterfowl (ducks, geese and swans) and then the land fowl (chickens, turkeys, pheasants and their kin). Heene cemetery’s most ancient bird visitors are the woodpigeons. Strictly, therefore, we ought to refer to birds as dinosaurs, for they are direct descendants. The RSPB would be more accurately restyled as the RSPD. Where known, the conservation status of each bird is given as red, amber, or green, according to its survival potential based on 2016 populations and recent population trends.

Birds are warm-blooded, and have feathers, toothless, beaked jaws, and a strong, lightweight skeleton. They lay hard-shelled eggs. Their hearts have four chambers, and their metabolic rate is high. Although most are adapted for flight, many can also run, jump, swim and dive. Flightless birds retain vestigial wings. Brown, green, and grey are the commonest bird colours, for camouflage.