Great Spotted Woodpecker

Nothing carries the promise of spring quite like the drumming of a great spotted woodpecker.

Beginning on warmer days in winter, and peaking in early spring, these brief, percussive bursts are delivered from high in the trees.

This is not the sound of a hole being excavated, which is a more discreet tap-tapping. The drumming is territorial, and it’s the volume and resonance that counts.

For this reason great spotted woodpeckers choose hollow trunks and broken branches, that amplify the sound.

The great spotted is by far the commonest of our three woodpeckers in most parts of the UK, and by far the likeliest drummer we will hear.

It’s a short blast, less than a second long, followed by a pause.

It may prompt a sense of anticipation in the listener - did I imagine that? Will it repeat? Has it gone? And there it is again.

It's like a microcosm of the experience of those occasional warm, song-filled days early in the year - the ones that seem so assured of the coming season, only to be supplanted by a convulsion of cold windy weather. The memories of which leave you wondering whether you dreamed the whole thing up.

Whatever the season, the presence of a great spotted woodpecker is often given away by its loud contact call - an exclamatory ‘chick!’.

This is given both in flight and when perched, sometimes insistently. And it’s a sound that can be heard in an increasing number of places, perhaps due to the great spotted woodpecker’s opportunistic tendencies.

While their diet is based on invertebrates prised from under bark or out of rotting wood, they will take other birds’ eggs, and nestlings too. And they don’t mind hanging from a peanut feeder in the garden, which may be the most important factor in their recent successes.

So whether you are deep in the woods or at the local park, listen for a drum roll and an explosive ‘chick’.

Great spotted woodpeckers are widely distributed across Europe and Asia. Over the last twenty years they have begun to breed on the island of Ireland too. For more about their behaviour and ecology visit the British Trust for Ornithiology.