Great Spotted Woodpecker

I have had these Woodpeckers around for a couple of years, last year I heard them rattling on the Horse Chestnut tree but rarely saw one. This year there is one pecking nearly every morning on the blue tit nesting box, late morning it goes to the Horse Chestnut tree but is difficult to see there.

Today I heard it twice on the tit box, and later again when I was outside so I grabbed the camera and got some pics on zoom. It was hopping up the trunk by then, then it went to some branches for some feasting. I wonder if it's trying to use the box for nesting, or tapping to make grubs come out the bark.

I did see the resident tits which use the box from this time every year ganging up on it one morning, I hope it doesn't put them off from nesting there.

This is a male, the female is similar but doesn't have the red patch on the nape.

I managed to get another two pics of it upside down on a branch, this one is the best. It looks to have a very long beak, they do use their tongue to stick grubs to but it's not close enough to see what is happening.

Excellent, Wallaby - what a unique angle!!! Is it about the size of a Hairy Woodpecker?

It was a lucky shot Murmur, they all were as it's not easy taking a quick shot on zoom. Woodpeckers don't stand still for long!

I don't know how long a Hairy Woodpecker is but this is around 9" long.

This is one I took in June 05. It has a red patch on top of the head, the juveniles have that. I got several pics of it out of a small top window as it went up the tree.

Yes, very similar size

Resin

Here's a picture of a Hairy. For whatever reason I don't seem to have a picture of the Downey . . . I'll look further.

I love the woodpeckers, but unfortunately there are none in Australia.
Way back in 1968, in England, I found a branch on which a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, liked to drum.
I got permission of the land owner to put a hide in the tree and made a device for imitating the drumming of the woodpecker.
I sat in the hide and drummed, and I did get one brief visit from the Lesser Spotted, but only managed one not very good picture. It seems however that my drumming was more like the frequency of the Greater Spotted, because a lovely male Greater Spotted arrived and every time I drummed, he drummed too. He spent a long time in the tree only a few feet from me and I was able to get some pictures. Here is one of the best ones:

A friend had a bird-table with an old coconut filled with suet and he had Greater Spotted Woodpeckers coming to the suet and that made photography rather easier. Here (also in 1968) is the Greater Spotted Woodpecker at his bird table:

Nice shots everyone! I love seeing a woodpecker thats new to me.

It looks very similar in shape, minus the red, slightly different white pattern but they look to be related!

That must have been fun with the Woodpecker next to you Ken! The poor bird probably thought it had a mate!

The Lesser Spotted I have read makes a softer drumming sound. I heard a softer one last year in the Horse Chestnut and I was convinced it was a different bird, then I saw it flying down my road low down but I don't know which it was. Perhaps that tree makes a different noise, but this year it doesn't sound soft.

I'm sure I saw a Green Woodpecker one morning on the tit box, I jumped out of bed and only got a glimpse through bleary eyes before it flew but the back looked brownish green. The next day it was in the Chestnut tree, I saw it fly to the neighbours oaks and the wings looked brownish with (I think) black and white bars lengthways.

I took a pic of it on zoom, but it was very dull, it does look to be the shape of a Green Woodpecker. Perhaps someone can recognise it from the pic?

It looks to have much to sharp a beak for a woodpecker. In your picture it looks very like a starling.
Here is a male Green Woodpecker that I photographed at the nest hole it was excavating in an oak tree back in 1966:

and here is his mate waiting on the tree while he build them a house!

Sorry, I'm not convinced. It doesn't look to have the bulk of a Green Wp (for Americans, about the same size as, and similar behaviour to, a Flicker), and also the "wings looked brownish with (I think) black and white bars lengthways" doesn't fit well. Green Wp is also decidedly uncommon in Lincs., there's a few on the Wolds, but the rest of the county is virtually blank for them on the BTO map. I suspect your pic is just another GSpW, though it's too dark to be fully certain.

Lesser Spot is also very rare in Lincs (actually, it's getting very rare almost everywhere in Britain!), and never easy to see; they're only the size of a Great Tit (for Americans, slightly smaller than Downy Wp), pretty tiny. Its drumming as well as softer than GSpW is also longer, and fades away at the end of the roll.

Resin

I just lightened the pic in photoshop; it is a Great Spot. The bill looking thin and sharp is because its edges are burnt out by the bright light behind.

Resin

Yes I agree, it is a Greater Spotted Woodpecker, I should have thought to try and edit the image for a better look.

It was the only bird that flew from the tree, and it was tapping, so it probably is the GSpW, it was a dull day but the wings did look brown, the black and white bars don't fit the Green Wp.

The bird I saw last year wasn't small as you say they are Resin, so again I must have regular GSpW's. The tapping then as now seems always to be in 5's. Last year however was a very unusual year, I had many birds and butterflies I hadn't seen before.

I was certain I saw a brownish back in the morning though! The black and white is very obvious, but then I was blurry eyed!

Your Green W's making a nest in an oak tree Ken, I imagine the wood would have to be a little rotten to excavate a nest? I read that GSpW's will peck a hole in the side of a tit box for eggs and young birds, surely it would need to be thin or soft wood to do that?

Just saw your verdict! The powers of editing! Thanks.

Yes, I think the woodpeckers exploit flaws in the wood when selecting a site for their nests. Making a hole in sound oak wood would be very hard work. I watched it several times from a hide on the ground and saw it throw beakfuls of chips out from the hole, which was big enough for the bird to go right inside.
Sadly the nesting was unsuccessful. A pair of starlings stole the hole from the woodpeckers. I at least twice saw the woodpecker drag a starling out of the nest hole by the leg, but the starlings were very pesistent and eventually the woodpeckers gave up and the starlings assumed occupancy.
Squatters rights!


This message was edited Feb 28, 2007 6:21 PM

They can drill through surprisingly hard wood if they're determined enough. The usual method to protect nestboxes is to put a metal plate surrounding the hole to stop them enlarging it, though even then, they've been known to drill a new hole through the side of the box. The only guaranteed woodpecker-proof boxes are the ones made of 'woodcrete' (sawdust-cement mix), but they're very expensive.

Resin

Starlings seem to take advantage of many birds! I watched one that kept following a Thrush around the lawn, as it found something in the grass the Starling would rush it and the Thrush moved on!

I would have thought a Woodpecker had a sharper beak than a Starling! This article is where I read it, they say they normally lay eggs in the second half of May but delay it until early June when Starlings take over their nest. Does that mean they make another nest, or do they wait until the Starlings have flown? I wonder if they have to lay their eggs on the ground and make more, or if they can hold them back, this could have been going on for hundreds of years and become an evolutionary thing!

http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/g-s-woodpecker.htm

If you can lay your hands on sawdust you could make your own tit boxes with moulds, or cover the whole box with metal!

Great photos everyone. I love woodpeckers and seeing the ones that I don't have here is always exciting!

It's exciting to see them here too sadie, I have only started seeing them in the last 3 years.

Resin, in the Birds of Britain it states the Green Woodpecker is fairly common over most of England, more in the south. I'm not too far from the south and many wildlife are moving northwards.

http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/green-woodpecker.htm

Sightings near Boston

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/asop/nature/roger_goy.shtml

I noticed the Hummingbird Hawkmoth is mentioned too at Eagle Moor, I have those, it's not far from me.

Regular sightings of Green Woodpecker at Whisby Nature park, that is probalby less than 3 miles as the Woodpecker flies.

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/places_to_go/whisby_nature_park_lincolnshire

I feel certain the bird I saw on the tit box was a Green Woodpecker.

Hi Wallaby,

I'm going on the basis of the BTO Atlas, which is (dare I say it!) a huge lot more detailed and authoritative :-) . . . here's a snapshot of their map, hope they won't mind a small breach of their copyright. Maybe if I plug the book, they'll forgive it: D. W. Gibbons et al., The New Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland; ISBN 0-85661-075-5 - an excellent book, well worth getting.

Much the same as up here (Northumbs), in Lincs they are very patchily distributed and at low density, you have to go to exactly the right places to find them (for which read, to the few areas which meet their very strict habitat requirements); even a short distance from where they breed, they can be extremely scarce, if the habitat doesn't suit them.

Resin

Authoritative as the book may be, that doesn't appear to show any in the Lincoln area (which there are), although it doesn't show locations I have a good idea where Lincoln sits on the map.

Whisby is on the very edge of Lincoln, I am further out in the country. Lots of oak trees etc around me.

I fail to see just how accurate a book can be, if a presence hasn't been reported how would they know where they are?

I have been looking closer at the pic of the bird on top of the oak tree which Resin has edited. I could see a reddish patch at the back of the head but couldn't work out where it fitted.

Looking again I realise that is the top of the head, the bird is not side on view but facing slight away in a northward direction. The back is mainly visible, there are black and white bands at the bottom edge of the wing.

I know the back of it looked brown rather than black when it flew, it was fairly low and undulating in flight, and I was stood fairly high on a bank so got a reasonable view of it's back.

The shape of the bird in the pic does look like a Green Woodpecker, the red is the top of the head and there is too much, also in the wrong place for a GSpW, also it can't be a young GSpW at this time.

I showed the pic to my partner of a Green Woodpecker, he had seen one on our lawn around 2 years ago, I didn't see it but because he mentioned it had a large sharp beak I suggested it may have been a Jay as they are here too. He said it looked like a large tropical sort of bird. He doesn't know a lot about birds, but said it looked like a cross betrween a penguin (the beak) and a parakeet.

This angle is similar to my pic, the bird was on top of a very high oak tree a fair distance off, it's bulk wouldn't really show well at that angle.

http://www.english-country-garden.com/a/i/birds/green-woodpecker-3.jpg