Peak District Birds  – The Woodpecker (Great and Lesser spotted)

Once seen these birds are never forgotten, but also once heard they aren’t forgotten either. . These stunning looking birds, with their distinctive colourings, share the common black, white and red colourings, but with different variations on each bird. The Great Spotted Woodpecker has a black and white head and back, it’s snowy white underparts and its bright red colouring on its nape rump can be seen in a blur as it slips through the trees. Usually heard before seen, these wonderful birds are quite the usual visitor to our Peak District woodlands and the distinctive knocking can be heard echoing throughout a lot of the Derbyshire valleys, especially in springtime.

It is 9 inches in length and with a wingspan of 14 to 16 inches, and there are nearly 30,000 breeding pairs who live with us all year round. This bird is also known as a Pied woodpecker and has a black body with a large white shoulder patch and bright scarlet just underneath its tail. It is much larger than our other British woodpecker, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, being about the size of the Starling, while the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is more sparrow sized.

The head is black and white, with a black crown and nape, snow white forehead, cheeks and throat. The back, wings and tail are jet black, except for the very distinctive white shoulder patches and smaller white spots on wings. The underparts are a whitish buff colour with red just underneath the tail and its bill is grey coloured, with legs which are grey green. The eye is also red and the sexes are very similar, except that the male has a red patch on the nape and the female.

It lays eggs, which are white, smooth and glossy and are about 26 mm x 19 mm. Both birds incubate the eggs and also feed the young and breeding starts mid April onwards, but usually they only have one clutch a year. A clutch can consist of between 3 to 8 eggs and they take 10 to 16 days to incubate and the babies fledge between 18 and 21 days. Baby woodpeckers have a red crown, a pink vent and blotchy white shoulder patches.

As with other woodpeckers, the stiff tail feathers in both sexes have are used as a prop when it is clinging to a tree. It arranges its toes with two pointing forward and two backwards to hang on. They are usually probing tree trunks for insects and larvae but they also feed on nuts and berries during the winter. They grip the bark with their strong claws and when they are probing the crevices of the bark or drilling holes, this is the best chance to see one.

Even better, if you get to see a streak of red when they are in flight, they undulate as they completely fold their wings against their body to slipstream, in between a series of several flaps. They are really wonderful to watch, and very agile as they manoeuvre in between the trees at top speed.

It is easier to spot them in woodlands, especially with mature broadleaved trees, although they do like mature conifers in parks and large gardens. They aren’t found as far north as Scotland and only a handful of pairs nest in Ireland but numbers are definitely increasing in England and Wales.

Their call to each other is a loud ‘tchick’ and the male Great Spotted Woodpecker is renowned for drumming its bill on a branch, which usually only lasts a few seconds but comprises of 8 to 12 beats which fade away at the end. Great spotted woodpecker’s nest in a chamber in a tree which is chiselled out by both male and female birds. When it is chiselling, it doesn’t tap as quickly as when the male performs its drumming song.

The woodpecker’s tongue is extremely long and sticky, specifically designed to extract insects such as ants from their nest chambers and crevices. It is so long that the muscles wraparound rear of the skull and back to the upper mandible. When they aren’t able to find food in the wild, they are feeding from peanut and suet feeders in our gardens and this is becoming more and more popular as they gain our trust.

They are not a declining bird thank goodness and this has partly been aided by the spread of Dutch Elm disease, which has provided extra dead wood for their nest sites. Also, due to the Peak District’s series of wet winters recently, storms bring down trees, which the woodpecker is love, providing insects in abundance, so it isn’t any wonder they like to stay with us all year round and can be seen even in autumn, as the young birds take time to disperse to their own feeding grounds.