Great spotted woodpecker
| 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 found across Eurasia and parts of North Africa. this woodpecker is mainly resident unless the conifer cone crop in the north of its range collapses, but the tendency of some birds to wander widely 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. Both sexes drum on trees for contact and territorial advertisement.
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 breeds in holes excavated in living or dead trees, unlined apart from fallen wood chips. The typical clutch is four to six glossy white eggs incubated mainly the female. Both parents feed the chicks and keep the nest clean. When the young fledge, each adult takes responsibility for feeding part of the brood for about ten days.
The great spotted woodpecker 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, 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.
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Wikipedia