Flamboyant, dressed in vibrant scarlet, beautifully flecked with black spots on white, a medium-sized bird makes its presence known by intense bouts of rhythmic drumming. It echoes through woodland and garden in spring. A telegraph pole in our garden has become the main focal point for this attention-seeking behaviour, as a frenetic male uses it to mark his territory. He begins his breeding display on the wooden part of the structure.

The green woodpecker is the largest of the three species.

Finding this does not make enough impact he quickly hops up to the little metal roof protecting the top from the elements, and begins to knock hell out of that instead. The metal adds an intense ring to the noise and reverberates dramatically, making sure that any intruders on the woodpecker’s patch are well aware of his presence. It also indicates to his prospective mate that he is around. A tit box sited half way up the pole must prove a noisy location in which to rear offspring. Last year the woodpecker also drilled a bigger opening in the front of the box, and then finally took out the base as well.

Was this to enlarge it for itself as a prospective nest hole, or was there more nefarious business at work? Woodpeckers are not only fiercely territorial, but will also feed on the young of small passerines, something many people find shocking. I have seen them flying back to their young with a chick from another bird’s nest in their bills, and even witnessed them bashing it against a tree branch to ensure it is dead, as kingfishers do with small fish. I tell myself this is merely nature red in claw and beak, and that sometimes the young of other birds are easy meat.

One pair of woodpeckers became adept at drilling into house martins’ dried mud nests. Three consecutive broods disappeared in this way. Despite his unsavoury habits, the glorious greater spotted woodpecker still remains one of Britain’s favourite garden birds. Interestingly, both sexes drum, though it is the male that is the noisiest when he is fi red with hormones, using it as an amorous song to lure a mate as well as a means of establishing territory. All too often there is little but bad news with regard to many of our species of birds. Too many are dwindling due to loss of habitat, climate change and human interference. While birds such as the house sparrow, song thrush and yellowhammer are all in sharp decline, the greater spotted woodpecker is thriving.

Benefiting from better habitat

During the mid 1800s greater spotted woodpeckers were extinct from Scotland and the North of England due to extensive tree felling. Enlightened planting schemes now provide valuable habitat, and the birds are on the increase. They have also benefi ted greatly from the copious quantities of food put out in gardens, and readily come to nut feeders, particularly during cold spells or when they are under pressure to feed burgeoning young. Young woodpeckers are easy to distinguish, as they have a red crown on their heads. The adult female has no red on her head, and the male has a small red patch at the back of his.

For a woodpecker, and indeed many other species, a tree is as important dead as alive and its decaying wood provides a succulent nutritional storehouse as well as a suitable habitat for nest holes. Trees such as oak, birch and pine are important for woodpeckers as they accommodate a huge range of invertebrate life.

Designers of protective headgear would do well to study the intricacies of a woodpecker’s specially reinforced skull. Its brain is encased by shock absorbers to cope with the impact of drilling and drumming. With an awl-shaped bill more effi cient than one of the finest Black and Decker drills, once they have listened for the hollow sound indicating that there is a grub secreted away in a tree trunk, they will begin their powerful DIY session and clock up an astonishing 40 beats per second. Many dead trees bear telltale pockmarks of a woodpecker’s prospecting, and deeper holes from which they have extricated a meal using a specially adapted elongated tongue. They also place cones and larger nuts in crevices and holes, and once there, hammer them open with their bills as if using an anvil.

Their feet are also adapted; long sharp claws help them to hop up the steepest trees with great speed and give them fi rm purchase, even during a severe gale. I recently had a young greater spotted wood-pecker handed in to me. It had flown into a window, was badly stunned and had a damaged eye. We fed it a diet of crushed peanuts, mealworms and digestive biscuit, and though we left this smeared on a small log in the box where we kept it, the bird would not touch it unless I hand fed it. This was all very well, but once it started to take the food from my fingers, it also began to hammer its head fiercely as it took it. My finger quickly bore a large puncture wound and became very painful. The power of a woodpecker’s drilling equipment should not be underestimated. Eventually we managed to get it to take food we packed into holes in rotting birch logs. We have two other species of woodpecker in Britain, the extremely rare lesser spotted which looks very similar to the greater spotted but is only the size of a sparrow, and the green woodpecker that is found all over Scotland.

The lesser spotted has not fared so well in recent years.

It requires ancient woodland. Being intensely shy, it does not live alongside man so has not learnt to take advantage of the free takeaways in so many gardens everywhere. In recent years, loss of many mature trees has made it difficult for them to thrive. The green, though fairly common, is so shy that it is seldom seen. Its distinctive laughing call, giving rise the old country nickname, the yaffle, is all you may have to indicate it is in the area. This sound often seems to precede rain – giving rise to another nickname, the Rainbird. Once the easily recognised call is heard, then with a little patience it can sometimes be located, particularly before the leaf canopy is dense in summer. It may perch on the side of a tree trunk, or there will be a brief glimpse as it passes by in bounding flight. Though the green woodpecker also drums, the noise is neither so resonant nor so frenetic as that of the other two species.

The green is the largest of the three species. Its diet consists of ants and grubs, and on occasion it feeds on lawns, but it never comes to a bird table. Its brilliant emerald-green, red and yellow colouring make it a most spectacular bird, arguably one of our most vibrant, and it is frequently mistaken for a foreign escapee. All three types of woodpecker have somewhat laboured flight, making them vulnerable to predation by birds such as the sparrowhawk.

Greater spotted woodpeckers are occasionally caught unawares as they leave nut feeders, perhaps slowed further by being satiated with nuts. We have found sad remnants of bedraggled spotted feathers close to the bird table where a victim has fallen prey to the sparrowhawk. But then there is the familiar chipping call as another greater spotted woodpecker takes to the wing from the wood close by, and disappears in a flash of brilliance in undulating flight. And so the cycle continues

fieldfacts

For more information visit www.rspb.org Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Scotland Headquarters, Dunedin House, 25 Ravelston terrace, Edinburgh, EH4 3TP