Great Spotted Woodpecker

Identification

A pied woodpecker whose black upperparts are broken by two big oval white shoulder patches — the field mark that separates it from almost every other European woodpecker. The wings are barred black and white, the underparts are off-white with a wash of pinkish red under the tail, and a black stripe runs back from the bill, through the eye, to the side of the neck. The sexes differ in one place only: the male carries a crimson patch on the nape, the female's nape is plain black. Juveniles wear a full red crown that fades before their first autumn.

Insects and wood-boring larvae make up most of the summer diet, prised out with a chisel bill and a tongue that flicks far beyond the tip. From autumn it switches to pine seeds, hazelnuts and beechmast, wedging cones into a favourite anvil — a tree crevice or a fence post — and hammering them open; the litter of stripped scales underneath gives the spot away. Each spring it cuts a fresh nest hole, usually in a dying birch or alder, and the abandoned cavities are later taken over by starlings, tits and bats. The common call is a sharp, explosive 'kick', often doubled, and both sexes drum in short bursts of about a dozen strikes on dead, resonant branches.

It is easy to find year-round in parks, cemeteries and older gardens with mature trees, and bold enough to come to peanut and suet feeders, where it will chase off tits and finches. February to April is the loudest period: listen for the drumming roll, or for the scolding 'kick' that usually announces the bird before you see it. Fresh rectangular digging in rotten trunks, and cone anvils surrounded by stripped scales, are reliable signs that one is working the area.