Dendrocopos major
| Great spotted woodpecker | |
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| Adult male Dendrocopos major pinetorum | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Piciformes |
| Family: | Picidae |
| Genus: | Dendrocopos |
| Species: | D. major |
| Binomial name | |
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Dendrocopos major (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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The great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) is a woodpecker that is found across Eurasia and parts of North Africa. It is mainly resident unless the pine crop in the north of its range collapses, but the tendency of some birds to wander means that it has recolonised Ireland and is a rare visitor to North America. Its plumage is pied black and white with a red lower belly. Males and young birds also have red on the neck or head.
The great spotted woodpecker occurs in all types of woodlands and is catholic in its diet, capable of extracting seeds from pine cones, insect larvae from trees or eggs and chicks of other birds from their nests.
It has a huge range and large population, with no widespread threats, so it is classed as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The woodpeckers are an ancient bird family consisting of three subfamilies, the wrynecks, the piculets and the true woodpeckers, Picinae. The Picinae are further divided into six tribes, the largest of which is the pied woodpeckers, Campetherini, which includes the great spotted woodpecker. Within the large genus Dendrocopus the great spotted woodpecker's closest relatives are the Himalayan, Sind, Syrian and white-winged woodpeckers, and possibly the Darjeeling woodpecker.
The great spotted woodpecker was described by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae in 1758 as Picus major. It was moved to its current genus by the German naturalist Carl Ludwig Koch in 1816.
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Wikipedia