A different great spotted woodpecker visits

I went to my study window having picked up my camera after I’d seen another great spotted woodpecker fly onto the pussy willow tree just behind our house. It was still before 9am and I hadn’t yet refilled the bird feeders. When I looked out of my study window I saw it had alighted on virtually the same spot as the woodpecker I blipped a few days ago. However this time I realised it was a male because of the distinguishing patch of red at the back of its head. You can just see fragments of sunflower seed on the top of its beak so it must have come to this tree to digest.

Once again I couldn’t open the double-glazed window as the bird was only about twenty feet away from me.  I watched it for a couple of minutes before it flew up onto another thinner trunk which it hopped up in short bursts until it reached the top of the tree. There was some characteristic hard headed pecking of the bark with its beak.  I would have blipped that situation except that there were many branches in the way.

A few days ago during one of the recent snow storms I watched the female great spotted woodpecker eating from the sunflower feeder on the patio down below. It then flew away straight to the bottom of the garden in its characteristic flight pattern, rising and falling in an s-curve. I watched with my eyes and saw where it landed and then raised my camera. To my surprise there were two woodpeckers, and seeing the distinctive patch of red on the back of one’s head I surmised they were probably a mating pair. I’m delighted to think they are now visiting here daily for food so hopefully we shall see their young in due course, as I have in years gone by. Then I was able to watch a parent teaching the juvenile woodpecker how to eat from the feeder!

I’ve added an ‘Extra’ of both the female at the sunflower feeder and also a distant view of the pair of them on two different trunks of the ash tree at the bottom of the garden. Not a great picture as it was snowing at the time, and far away, but at least it puts them on the blip record together in our garden.