Woodpeckers are some of my all-time favourite birds and I never tire watching them. They form a group of fascinating, feisty and clever birds with endless interesting aspects of behaviour. In Europe one can find 9 different species of real woodpeckers (wryneck excluded), only 5 of them exist around where I live: Black woodpecker – Dryocopus martius Green woodpecker – Picus viridis Great spotted woodpecker – Dendrocopus major Middle spotted woopecker – Dendrocopus medius Lesser spotted woodpecker – Dendrocopus minor
True woodpeckers exhibit a number of morphological adaptions that enable them to efficiently exploit their habitat, the deciduous and coniferous forests across Europe. Woodpecker skulls are especially adapted to a lifestyle of drumming, hammering and excavating. Without the built-in shock absorbers they would be subject to severe cerebral concussion every time their chisel-shaped powerfull bill is used for drumming or for excavating a new nest hole. They all have extensible, more or less long sticky tongues, some of them even barbed, allowing them to lick and glue or impale various species of prey such as ants and wood-dwelling larvae and beetles. Woodpeckers have 4 toes (with the exception of the three-toed woodpecker) that can be articulated or rotated individually, making it much easier to climb up and to cling to vertical surfaces. Feathers of woodpecker tails have very strong shafts and barbs, allowing them to climb upwards on a tree trunk using both feet at the time and stiffened their tails are regularly used as a prop to provide support when resting or working in a vertical position.
Woodpeckers are notoriously solitary and they need much more time to accept a temporary compagnion on their patch than other birds. Hence even though they don’t start breeding until spring, their courtship starts very early in the year, towards the end of the winter, as they need a long time to get used to each other. Drumming is a method of communication and enables the male to declare territorial rights, but also attracts females.
Woodpeckers are clever and able to learn quickly. They are part of a handful of species of birds that are able to use tools, often taken as a indicator of intelligence. They regularly establish so-called anvils, cracks or crevices in a tree trunk, in tree-forks or in a stone wall, sometimes even telegraph poles, where they wedge in hazelnuts, conifer cones, cherries or other fruit in order to extract the edible parts.
Unfortunately the three-toed woodpecker prefers alpine forests or the Scandinavian taiga to my home patch, but I was lucky enough to be able to observe one in Sweden. The three images in the gallery below were taken there.
Out of all the European picidae it is no doubt the black woodpecker I have spent most time with. I have lost count of the hours I have spent waiting in between feeding sessions or when the pair were taking turns in incubating. The species deserves their own gallery which can be viewed here:
