European Green Woodpecker

Identification

A large woodpecker coloured mostly in olive green, with a pale grey face, a crimson crown and a bright yellow-green rump that flashes as it flies. The underparts are a dull yellowish grey, finely barred on the flanks, and the wings are tinged with brown. The sexes are separated by the 'moustache' stripe below the eye: red with a black border in the male, entirely black in the female. Young birds are heavily spotted and streaked below and lack the solid crown.

It is an ant specialist and spends much of its time on the ground, probing lawns and anthills with a tongue that extends around 10 cm beyond the bill and is tipped with sticky saliva. Ants and their pupae form the bulk of the diet, with other insects taken in passing; its bill is comparatively weak for a woodpecker and it rarely excavates timber, cutting its nest hole into soft or decaying wood, often a fruit tree, and returning to the same site for years. The voice is unmistakable — a loud, laughing series of descending notes usually written as 'yaffle' — and it drums only seldom, mostly a soft tapping that carries barely a few metres.

Look for it in open woodland, hedgerows, old orchards, parks and large gardens with short grass, because the ants it depends on are scarce under dense canopy. It feeds on the ground more than any other European woodpecker, so scan lawns and path edges in the early morning, and listen for the far-carrying yaffle, which is most frequent from late winter into spring. In flight it undulates deeply, showing the yellow rump against dark wings.