Nature Notes

Brin Best

Wharfedale Naturalists' Society

WOODPECKERS are very infrequent visitors to our neighbourhood, so a sighting always brings with it great interest, not least because they are such intriguing and charismatic creatures.

During the summer months we sometimes hear – and very occasionally see – green woodpeckers in the fields around our house. Their curious laughing calls are very distinctive and give rise to their old country name of the 'yaffle'. Green woodpeckers spend a lot of time on the ground, and they are especially fond of ants, using their long tongues to quickly gobble up these insects.

My most recent woodpecker sighting, however, was of a fine male great-spotted woodpecker, which suddenly appeared on the telegraph pole at the bottom of our garden. I knew, from observations in other parts of the country, what was coming next. The woodpecker looked around for a while to check everything was safe, and then dropped onto some garden feeders where it warily tucked into a fat ball.

I knew this was a male great-spotted woodpecker because it had a distinctive red mark on its nape, whereas the female of the species has a solid black head and nape. The red under-tail area – technically called the 'vent' - is red in both sexes.

My observations over many years have confirmed that wooden telegraph poles are often used by great-spotted woodpeckers as safe lookout sites prior to descending into gardens to feed or drink.

My mother and father-in-law's garden was frequented by a great-spotted woodpecker that would always appear first on one of a line of telegraph poles, before eventually – when all appeared safe – flying over 25 metres to their bird bath in front of the patio window. It was always nervous, and everyone in the room had to remain motionless, otherwise it would retreat back to a pole again, using it as a refuge.

I have only once seen a woodpecker actually pecking a telegraph pole, and in this case it was a male engaging in its territorial 'drumming' to mark out its territory. As its head became a blur of white, black and red, a surprisingly loud machine-gun like sound of beak on wood confirmed that this was a woodpecker not to be messed with.

You can count yourself extremely lucky if you've cast eyes on the sparrow-sized lesser-spotted woodpecker in your garden. This is the smallest and by far the scarcest of the trio of woodpecker species that occur in Britain. Never common, this little gem has declined alarmingly in recent decades, and it seems almost incredible that I used to see them easily most weeks in the little wood on the outskirts of Manchester which was my childhood nature escape.