Our woodpeckers are among the beneficial birds. The harm they cause - spoilage of wood, eating ants, destroying seeds - is insignificant, especially in comparison with the benefits they bring, exterminating the most dangerous forest pests. Special studies have shown that even in years of poor pine tree spruce seeds, our largest numerous spotted woodpecker, which eats exclusively coniferous seeds all fall and winter, can destroy only a few percent of their total stock. All other species of our woodpeckers are insectivorous. Many of them, in general, are rare birds.

All species of real woodpeckers in the spring recognize and call each other with the help of the so-called drum trill, arising from the frequent blows of a beak on a dry tree. However, each trunk or branch has its own sound. Therefore, the identification elements of the drum roll are the frequency of beak strokes and the total duration of the trill.

Great Spotted Woodpecker

It is not difficult to recognize the large spotted woodpecker everywhere, both in appearance and in its drum trill. It is always short, consists of 10-12 strokes and lasts less than a second. In the beginning, it sounds abruptly, by the end it weakens. Individual strokes are indistinguishable and merge into a common crack. This woodpecker is the size of a blackbird, colored variegated: the back is black, the shoulders are white, the undertail and the back of the head are red. Females, unlike males, do not have a red color on their heads.

White-backed Woodpecker

A white-backed woodpecker resembling it is recognized by its white back and black shoulders, as well as by the color of the crown, which is red in males. In females it is black. This woodpecker has a special drum trill. It does not have a sharp start and end and lasts about two seconds. Its components, about 30 beats, are clearly distinguishable, and the whole trill gives the impression of a musical phrase. The white-backed woodpecker is associated in winter with birch stands. If the trunk of a birch is heavily infected with the larvae of a birch sapwood and barbel, the woodpecker will hammer it almost the whole day. Around the tree on which the white-backed woodpecker was feeding, usually there is wood dust, pieces of birch bark and rotten wood.

Small Spotted Woodpecker

The mottled-colored small speckled woodpecker is easy to recognize by its tiny size. This is the smallest of our woodpeckers, the size of a little more than a sparrow - just a baby, and a meeting with him is always pleasant. This woodpecker is gullible and brings close to itself. He often gives out his presence with a high leisurely squeak - repeating several times in a row “pii-pii-pii-pii-pii”. The small spotted woodpecker emits a relatively short, very often repeated trill. For his "game" sometimes uses horizontal branches of large trees. In this case, he drums, holding his beak down, which other species of woodpeckers do not. The flight, like all woodpeckers, is undulating. In winter, he adheres to deciduous small forests, floodplains of rivers, gardens and parks. Sometimes it flies even to large cities.

Three-toed woodpecker

A three-toed woodpecker must be sought in middle-aged spruce forests. During feeding, he sits for a long time on the same big tree, eating various bark beetles (engravers, typographers) and their larvae.

Medium spotted woodpecker

The average variegated woodpecker, living in the zone of mixed forests and oak forests, extracts insects from the surface of trunks, from cracks and folds of the bark. He rarely chops wood.

Black woodpecker

The black woodpecker, or yellow, is the most colorful of all woodpeckers, attracting attention with appearance and voice. His presence in the forest is always pleasing, and not only because when you meet him, the thought flickers: “So, large trees still survive in the forests, in which he can nest!” The very appearance of this bird, at first glance absurd and unusual, but possessing a distinctive attractive power, is encouraging. It’s hard for me to say what exactly is the unusual and attractive black woodpecker. Everything in it is perhaps unusual: black plumage, some wild look of almost colorless eyes with a very special pupil shape, a habit of peeking from behind a tree trunk, a huge bright beak, which a woodpecker wields like a carpenter with a chisel. In search of insects, he sometimes crushes huge old stumps and hollows out large holes in tree trunks. There are cases when a black woodpecker penetrated the houses boarded up for the winter, making large holes in thick fresh boards and ate insects, including cockroaches, wintering in the house. How, one wonders, could he have guessed that insects live in the house? It is also unclear what kind of sensory organs the black woodpecker is guided by when he, hollowing out grooves in the form of funnels in large spruce trees, finally reaches the ants living in the rotten wood of a thick tree. Does he examine the tree, tap or perhaps sniff out? In a word, everything is not clear in the biology and behavior of the black woodpecker, although quite a lot of articles have been written about him. Of particular interest are his voice reactions. They are more diverse than other woodpeckers. Trill lasts about 3 seconds. In this case, individual strokes that make up the fraction are clearly distinguishable. They follow one another at a speed of 16 times per second. The whole fraction sounds like a long rolling “rrrrrrr ...” fading in the end. Guided by it, sometimes it is possible to approach the woodpecker at a fairly close distance and examine it with binoculars. Being scared, a black woodpecker always gives a distinctive voice on the fly. This is either a song - a loud fang of "fangs, fangs, fangs ...", usually published in the spring, on the nesting site, both on the fly and on the tree, or the intermittent frequent voice trill, "prpr ... prprpr ... prpr ...", by the sound of which is easy to determine the direction of flight of the woodpecker. It can be heard at all times of the year, but most often in the fall and winter. Apparently, this is a specific woodpecker invocation cry. It is published only on the fly. At the end of the voice trill, you just have to wait a bit, you will surely hear a lingering, mournful, loud plaintive cry “weaving”, repeated several times. What is the point of this scream? Territory protection? Or maybe a cry of loneliness? The human ear  he is perceived as a call to oneself like. In any case, having issued a signal, the woodpecker listens for a long time, and upon hearing the answer, flies up, is interested. However, black woodpeckers prefer to stay alone all fall and part of winter. Maybe they still maintain voice contact with each other, but at a great distance? How else can one explain the beginning of pair formation in the middle of winter? All these questions need to be clarified.

All of the woodpeckers listed above belong to the group of so-called hollowing woodpeckers, who forage for themselves mainly by means of chiselling. Their drum trill became the main means of communication during the mating season and appeared, apparently, on the basis of sounds accompanying chiselling in the process of foraging. The song itself is missing. It was preserved only in the black woodpecker and, to some extent, in the small speckled one.

Gray-haired, green woodpecker

Gray and green woodpeckers are much less likely to hammer tree trunks. They are similar in their food specialization. They feed mainly on ants, which are obtained by digging up anthills. This was reflected in the nature of their spring communications. They use voice communication - a song that is pronounced in all species of low-dwelling woodpeckers. Drum trills are issued less frequently by them. Most often, these woodpeckers are found in mixed or deciduous forests, as well as in parks. Akin to woodpeckers wryneck  , which will be discussed later, does not hammer tree trunks and only sings in spring. A drum trill is not typical for her.

Typically, birds of close species have distinct songs. Singing species of woodpeckers cry in spring similarly. Their song has the same structure and is a series of sounds, sometimes very similar in different species.

Green woodpecker ,   for example, in the spring she screams in almost the same way as she wants, and an untrained hearing may not distinguish their voices. Sitting motionless on the trunk or bitch of a tree, closer to its top, the green woodpecker for a long time and often makes a series of identical sounds, "kui-kui-kui ...". The whole song lasts about 5 seconds, and during this time the woodpecker manages to play his “cui” 20 times. After a short break, a second song is heard, then a third, etc. After singing, the woodpecker can get close to itself. If you catch it in the field of view of binoculars, your eyes will see an unusually beautiful bird in a luxurious green-yellow plumage. This is a male. It is noticeably larger than the large mottled one, and its top is red. He can be distinguished from a female by his mustache, which is also red for him, while the female is black. The spring cry of the female is similar to the voice of the male, but it sounds less often. On the fly, the green woodpecker, like the black one, almost always emits a very loud, sometimes intermittent, like a machine gun burst, shouting "gyugyugyugyugyugyu." Especially often it is heard in late July - early August. This cry in combination with a deep undulating flight allows you to accurately determine the appearance of a woodpecker.

A gray-headed woodpecker, which in many ways resembles green, but is painted a little duller, more mobile and usually does not sit in one place for a long time. His spring song is characterized by uneven intervals between the sounds emitted, which gradually decrease towards the end of the period of each song. "Kyu-kyu-kyukyu-kyukyukyu-kyu-kyu" - like this, about to shout a gray-headed woodpecker in one place, then fly to another, where it will sing again several times, etc. He willingly flies up to imitate his own voice and allows himself to be examined. The coloring of the head is a sure distinguishing feature of this woodpecker, also generally green: the male has a small red spot on his forehead, while the female is devoid of red.

The species of woodpeckers I introduced to you also live in forests of various types, but in the park they can be found all together.

Squinting Woodpeckers / Picariae

Woodpeckers are small and medium sized birds: the smallest are smaller than the sparrow, the largest are from the crow. The appearance and color of woodpeckers are very different. Some species have a uniform brownish color, others have a colorful, often quite bright plumage. The wings are dull, usually consisting of 10-11 primary feathers. The tail often consists of 10-12 tail. Sexual dimorphism is mild; chicks are colored similar to adults. The legs of woodpeckers are usually four-fingered, short, but strong, well adapted for climbing the trunk and branches of trees: in most species, 2 fingers are facing forward, 2 back. The claws are hooked, which helps the bird to easily stay on the trees. All woodpeckers are diurnal, the vast majority forest birds. They begin to breed at the age of about a year, forming pairs in the nesting period. Woodpeckers nest in hollows or burrows. The number of eggs in the clutch varies greatly. More often, the clutch consists of 2-12 plain white eggs, which are laid directly on the bottom of the nest; litter in the nest is usually absent. Both male and female (but larger female) incubate clutch for about 2 weeks. Chicks hatch blind and in the vast majority of species naked (without downy outfit). After leaving the nests, the chicks stay together for some time as a family, but soon the brood breaks up. Most woodpeckers are non-living birds: in groups they can be found only in places rich in food. Woodpeckers lead a sedentary life, but in autumn many species roam, flying to places where they did not nest. Farther away from nesting sites, they fly in the winter. Almost all woodpeckers feed on insects, less commonly eat plant foods. Many species, especially those living in the temperate zone, switch in the winter to feeding on tree seeds. Some species consume exclusively plant foods. Exterminating insects, many of which damage trees and shrubs, woodpeckers bring certain benefits to forestry. In addition, the majority of woodpeckers nesting for the device hollow out hollows, and other hollow-nesting birds subsequently willingly settle in them, the overwhelming majority of which are insectivorous birds useful for forestry. Woodpeckers are widespread in all forests of the globe, with the exception of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Madagascar; especially a lot of them in South America. This order includes 380 species, united in 2 suborders: Yakamara (Galbulae) and woodpeckers (Pici). The birds from the Yakamar suborder are characterized by an elongated body, a long, almost awl-shaped beak with setae at the base, short wings, a long stepped tail and soft fluffy plumage with a golden sheen, for which the Yakamar is also called sparkles. These birds are common in Central and South America. Yakamars are divided into 2 families: chatters (Galbulidae) and puffs (Bucconidae). The suborder of woodpeckers proper includes outwardly very different birds, characterized by a strong, usually massive beak and a dense stocky body with a medium-sized tail. These birds are widespread in America, Africa, Europe and Asia, almost everywhere where woody and shrubby vegetation occurs. Woodpeckers themselves are divided into 4 families.

White-headed woodpecker / Campephilus principalis

A white-billed woodpecker is found in southeast North America, where it inhabits the vast expanses of swampy forests. The color of this woodpecker is strict. The main color of its plumage is thick black, from the nape of the neck on the sides of the neck there are two wide white stripes connecting on the back, so the middle of the back is also white. The wing, with the exception of the humeral feathers and the outer edge of the three outer primary wing, is white. At the back of the head there is a large beautiful crest of elongated feathers - the male is bright red, the female is black. The eyes are bright yellow and shiny, the legs are lead gray, the beak is light, ivory. For the color of the beak, this woodpecker was named.   The contours of the body of the white-billed woodpecker are also noteworthy: his neck is thin, making his head seem disproportionately large.

White-headed woodpecker

P about the size it is a very large woodpecker: the length of the bird exceeds 0.5 m. White-billed woodpeckers live in pairs, which probably do not decay all their lives. Both birds of the pair are always together, but even at a distance it is not difficult to distinguish them: the female is more vociferous, but more careful than the male. The breeding season begins in March. White-billed woodpeckers are very careful and stay in the most secluded corners of the forest during the nesting period. The hollow is always arranged in the trunk of a living tree, usually in oak, always at a considerable height; often the inlet of the hollow is located under a large bough or branch, protecting from the flow of water into the hollow when it rains. Both male and female take part in hollowing out the hollow. The masonry consists of 5-7 pure white eggs placed directly on the bottom of the hollow. In the southern areas of the range, these birds breed chicks twice a season, in the north they have only one clutch. By its habits, the white-billed woodpecker is somewhat different from the rest of the woodpeckers. His flight is extremely beautiful and, like other woodpeckers, wavy. But, flying from one tree to another, the bird first climbs to the top of the tree on which it was located, and, flying from it, does not flap its wings, but, opening them, plans down; she describes a smooth arc, admiring the beauty of her plumage of the most demanding artist. This woodpecker does not like to fly long distances and prefers to climb the trunk and branches of trees and jump from one closely standing tree to another. Climbing a tree, the white-eyed woodpecker constantly makes a clear, clean and pleasant cry of "pet-pet-pet." He repeats this three-syllable cry so often that one has to doubt whether the bird is silent for at least several minutes during the day. His voice can be heard per kilometer. The woodpecker produces its food by carefully examining the trunks and large branches of trees. Starting at the bottom of the tree and climbing in spiral lines around the trunk, the bird examines the cracks and crevices of the bark and hammer them, looking for insects. The strength of this bird is very great: with one beak, it beats off pieces of bark and chips up to 17-20 cm in length, and when it finds a shriveled tree, infected with insects, it knocks bark from 2-3 m2 of the trunk surface in a few hours and thus in 2-3 days completely sanders a tree. Larvae, pupae, and adult beetles living in the bark and wood, as well as open-living insects living on the surface of trunks, most often become prey for white-billed woodpeckers. In late summer and autumn, these birds eat the berries and fruits of wild trees. People often destroy these beautiful birds for the sake of their extremely beautiful head with a bright crest and ivory beak. Travelers eager for various “memorabilia” seek to buy the head of a white-billed woodpecker as an exotic souvenir from those places where this bird is an integral part of the landscape of terrible and at the same time wonderful swamps. Currently, the white-billed woodpecker is a very rare bird: it has already disappeared in most of its range.

Woodpecker    / Melanerpes formicivorus

The acorn woodpecker makes huge reserves. In the fall, he hollows in the trunks and large branches of oaks, eucalyptus trees, pines, sycamore trees, and even in telegraph poles and walls of wooden houses, many thousands of small potholes - cells, each of which is tightly driven into the stomach. The size of such pantries is impressive: in the mountain forest of California they counted 20 thousand acorns driven by a woodpecker into sycamore bark, and in the bark of another tree - pines found about 50 thousand acorns! These woodpeckers are also remarkable for the fact that usually all year round they live in groups of 3-12 birds. Each such group occupies a rather large territory from which extraneous individuals are expelled. All members of the group take part in the defense of this territory; they all participate in the storage of acorns and collectively use their reserves.

Woodpecker

AT the natural group is not divided into pairs; all the females of the group lay their eggs in one common nest. All members of the group take part in the incubation of the masonry and in the feeding of the chicks. However, often (in some years and in separate places) you can also find pairs of birds that lead a typically monogamous lifestyle, but in most cases this is a temporary phenomenon.

Woodpecker green    / Picus virdis

The green woodpecker is a very beautiful bird. Its dorsal side and wings are yellowish-olive, the nipple is brilliant yellow, the feathers are brown, the tail is brownish-black with grayish transverse stripes. The top of the head, the back of the head and the stripe from the lower jaw to the neck, carmine red, the forehead, the area around the eyes and cheeks are black. Ears, throat and goiter are whitish, the rest of the ventral side of the body is pale green with dark streaks. The shape of the body of this woodpecker resembles a large motley, but larger than it: the length of the green woodpecker is 35-37 cm, weight up to 250 g.   Green woodpecker lives in the deciduous and clarified mixed forests of Europe east to the Volga, in Asia Minor (except its northeastern regions) and in the Caucasus.

Woodpecker green

ABOUT most of all, it keeps where open spaces alternate with forests and where there are many trees of different ages. These are very cautious birds - individual couples settle far from each other, and therefore it is not easy to meet them. However, in the nesting period, birds give out their presence with loud cries: the female and the male cry in turn all day. Hollow birds hollow out mainly in decaying trees: old aspens, sedges, willows. Clutches occurring over most of the range in May (which is rather late for woodpeckers), consists of 5–9 shiny white eggs. Both male and female take part in their life-giving, as well as in feeding the chicks and in hollowing out the hollow. The green woodpecker feeds on various insects, which it collects on tree trunks. His favorite food is ants, eaten by him in huge quantities. To catch them, the woodpecker eagerly descends to the ground and, in search of pupae of ants - "ant eggs", breaks deep passages inside the anthills.

Earthen woodpecker    / Gecolaptes olivaceus

An earthen woodpecker is a bird of medium size for woodpeckers, whose body length is about 25 cm. It is painted very modestly: its plumage is mainly olive-brown with yellowish-brown trunks of fly-wing and orange-brown tail feathers. Upper tail and ventral side of the body with an admixture of red, gray head. This woodpecker is widespread in South Africa, where it is kept in treeless areas, inhabiting outcrops of mountain slopes and high river banks or slopes of ravines. By way of life, this original woodpecker is an amazing example of adaptation to conditions unusual for woodpeckers.   Typically, an observer sees a bird sitting on some large boulder or flying low above the ground from one rock outcrop to another.

Earthen woodpecker

L you can occasionally see an earthen woodpecker in a dense shrub. On the ground he moves in leaps. Therefore, it is called the earthen woodpecker, because it does not hammer trees, but breaks its own passages on the steep banks of rivers, on the slopes of hills and along the slopes of ravines, as well as in the walls of earthen buildings, both in search of food and for housing, in which it displays chicks. This dwelling is a hole about a meter long, at the end of which narrow arches are distributed to the sides and up, forming a small cave. The bottom of the cave of the bird is usually lined with shreds of animal hair. Here, during the breeding season, birds lay 3-5 pure white eggs. For most of their lives, these woodpeckers rummage in the ground in search of food, they also look for food on the ground, on the rocky walls of abandoned buildings and on the steep walls of rocks. Their food consists of insects and their larvae, as well as worms, spiders and some other invertebrates.

Golden Woodpecker / Colaptes auratus

The golden woodpecker is a small bird whose body length is about 27 cm. The color of this woodpecker is quite bright and beautiful. The dorsal side of the body is clayey-brown with black transverse streaks and a white nadhvost, the ventral side is white with black spots. The head is gray, surrounded by a red stripe, on the goiter a black stripe of a lunar shape. The trunks of the fly and tail feathers, as well as the underside of the wings are golden yellow. During the flight, the woodpecker often flaps its wings. Each time he waves them, his golden feathers flash brightly against the blue sky. The golden woodpecker is widespread in North America, where it inhabits the open plains. Nests in hollows. Its meat is highly appreciated by many hunters and is often served at the table.

Golden woodpecker

Red-headed woodpecker   / Melanerpes erythrocephalus

A red-headed woodpecker is a bird of small size for woodpeckers: its body is about 23 cm long. Its physique is dense, its head is large, its neck is short, and its tail is round. This woodpecker has a bright red head and neck, and its back, wings and tail are black, the ventral side is white. The red-headed woodpecker is one of the most common birds  North America. Here these woodpeckers are kept in sparse forests, often flying to feed on the fringes and flying, especially in the summer-autumn period, to settlements. In the spring, starting to breed, birds very rarely hollow out a new hollow; they usually find and clear, and sometimes deepen the old.   This hollow is always placed in a shriveled tree with rotting wood.

Red-headed woodpecker

H on the other hand, several hollows can be hollowed out on such a tree, only one can be occupied. In healthy green trees, these woodpeckers cannot hollow out their hollows. The nature of the red-headed woodpecker is very cheerful and mischievous. Sitting somewhere on a fence post near a field or road and seeing a passing man, the woodpecker slowly moves to the opposite side of the pillar, because of which he peeks from time to time, as if trying to unravel the intentions of the approaching one. If a person passes by, the woodpecker, deftly jumping to the top of the column, begins to drum on it with its beak, as if rejoicing at the fact that he managed to go unnoticed by the person. If a person approaches him, then the woodpecker flies to the next column, then to the next and starts to drum on it, as if teasing a person and inviting him to play hide and seek. Often these restless birds also appear near houses: they climb on them, they hit their roofs with their beaks. They bring a lot of trouble when bread and berries and fruits ripen in the gardens. These birds, arriving in large flocks, eat huge quantities of berries and fruits, completely devastating entire gardens. Extremely curious, red-headed woodpeckers crack down on apples. The bird sticks its beak with all its strength into the apple and, clinging to the branch with its paws, tears off the fruit planted on the beak, and then with this burden clumsily flies to the nearest fence. Sitting on a column, a woodpecker breaks an apple into pieces and eats it. Birds produce even greater devastations on grain fields, not only eating ripe grains, but also breaking stems and trampling ears of corn into the ground. Finally, these birds are also capable of predating: they look for nests of small birds, and often artificial nesting and drink the eggs found in them. At times, they even attack dovecotes. Satisfying hunger, red-headed woodpeckers gather in small flocks and, sitting on the branches of a dried tree, begin from here a peculiar hunt for flying insects. Birds rush at them from a distance of 4 m, make very deft turns in the air, grab insects and, issuing joyful cries, return to their original place. It is extremely pleasant to watch this competition from the outside: making complex pirouettes and turns, the birds demonstrate at the same time the beauty of their bright plumage. Red-headed woodpeckers feed on seeds and grains of various plants, fruits, berries and insects. Due to the damage that red-headed woodpeckers cause to fields and gardens, the locals ruthlessly exterminate them in huge numbers.

Copper Woodpecker / Colaptes mexicanus

The terrain in which the copper woodpecker lives is a dry desert covered with pale green undersized agaves. Here and there among the various types of artichokes, breaking through the white sand, large yuccas grow lonely.   E the terrain that has been lifeless for most of the year makes a depressing impression on anyone traveling through it. And the more unexpected and joyful for a traveler is a meeting with flocks of copper woodpeckers. If you look closely at the flocks of these birds, you will notice that woodpeckers fly up to the dried flower-bearing stems of the agaves all the time, hammer them for a while, then fly onto the stem of the yucca, which is also hollowed, and then fly back to the agave, etc. This they peck out dried flower-bearing stems of agave acorns, which at one time were placed there by them. An interesting custom is a copper woodpecker to make pantries in the dried stems of agaves, where he hides acorns. To do this, the woodpecker cuts a small rounded hole in the lower part of the dried agave stem, reaching the cavity inside the stem, and pushes the acorns into it until it fills the part of the cavity that is below the hole. Then, slightly higher than the first, he pushes a second hole through which he fills with the acorns the part of the cavity located between these holes, etc. The cavity inside the stalk is narrow, and the woodpecker usually has to spend considerable effort pushing the acorns down. Sometimes, therefore, only one acorn is laid in each hole, but in this case there are a lot of holes in the agave stem, each of which has an acorn. Splitting the stem along, you can see that it is filled with a whole column of acorns. A copper woodpecker spends a lot of time and effort on storing acorns for the future, but perhaps he has to use no less labor to collect acorns: in the desert, where agaves grow, there are no oaks, and therefore woodpeckers have to fly for acorns for many kilometers to the slopes the nearest mountains. However, as compensation for such hard work, copper woodpeckers can live in the hot sun in this scorched desert, eating exclusively acorns reserved for this case. Remarkable is the way they are eaten. Having taken out an acorn, the woodpecker clamps it into a hole specially made for this purpose in the bark of the dry trunk of the yucca. The woodpecker easily breaks the shell of the acorn with the beak of the beak, and the nucleolus eats. Thus, during the dry season, these birds gather in places covered with agaves, where their warehouses are located, and when it rains, they fly to the valleys where they feed on insects, most of which are ants pecking on the ground.

Pointed woodpecker    / Jungipicus kizuki

The sharp-winged woodpecker is a small bird the size of a sparrow: it weighs only 19–25 g. Its color is variegated. Back, lower back and wings in alternating black and white transverse stripes. The head from above and from the sides, as well as the back of the neck is brownish-gray. The sides of the neck are white, bordered by black stripes below. From the beak through the eye to the white spot on the neck there is a white stripe. The goiter and throat are white below, the rest of the ventral side of the body is brownish with frequent dark longitudinal streaks. The middle pairs of tail feathers are black, the rest in black and white stripes. The male differs from the female in the presence of a few red feathers on the sides of the back of the head.

Pointed woodpecker

X a characteristic feature of this bird (as well as the entire genus of sharp-winged woodpeckers) is the presence of sharper wings than other woodpeckers. The woodpecker is widespread in the northeastern provinces of China, on the Korean Peninsula, on the Japanese and southern Kuril Islands, on Sakhalin and in the Ussuri Territory. It occurs in a variety of stands from impenetrable thickets of hot valleys to subalpine forests. In nesting time, birds prefer to stay in plantations of soft tree species (velvet, linden, poplar, etc.), where it is easier for them to hollow out or find a hollow for themselves. Typically, these woodpeckers nest in hollows of horizontal branches or tree branches. Masonry happens in May. Outside of the breeding season, pointed woodpeckers are usually found in flocks of tits, with which they carefully examine the branches, leaves and needles of trees and shrubs in search of insects. During the collection of food, this woodpecker can often be found climbing on the stems of thick herbaceous plants, where the bird sometimes chops the stems, catching insects and their larvae living in the plant tissues, and pecks seeds that have not yet crumbled.

Pampas woodpecker    / Colaptes agricola

Pampas woodpecker is a beautiful, brightly colored bird. Her body is black, the sides of her head, as well as the sides and front of her neck are golden yellow, her throat is white. The trunks of the feathers of the feathers are golden yellow, the tail feathers are black, and the lining of the wings is golden ocher. The male and the female are distinguished by the color of the mustache, which is red in the male and black in the female. The penguin woodpecker is a large bird with relatively long legs and a less rigid tail than other woodpeckers. A soft tail is a poor support when climbing a vertical surface, and therefore this woodpecker sits on a branch usually horizontally across the branch, and only occasionally climbs the trunk. This peculiar bird is widespread in the pampas of South America.

Pampas woodpecker

During the breeding season, the male and female dig a hole in the steep bank of the river or in the steep slope, where the female lays eggs. Sometimes, when there are no such slopes and cliffs in which birds can dig a hole, some freestanding tree with very soft wood is selected, where woodpeckers hollow out their hollows. These birds feed on the ground and pecking at invertebrates found. Sometimes they collect openly living insects on rare trees and bushes in pampas. Occasionally, using their legs and beak, they dig out worms and insect larvae from the ground.

Variegated woodpecker    / Dendrocopos major

The big spotted woodpecker is a beautiful, really very mottled bird. Its predominant color consists of a combination of black and white tones. The top of the head and neck, the dorsal side and the undertail are blue-black, shoulders, cheeks, neck flanks are white, the belly is off-white, the undertail is light red. The feathers are black with white spots, forming white transverse stripes on a black background of the folded wing. The tail is black, with the exception of the two extreme tail feathers, which are white. Eyes are brownish-red, beak is lead-black, legs are dark brown. The male differs from the female in a red spot on the crown. Young birds are similar in color to adults, but they have a red spot on their forehead. The tail of a large motley woodpecker of medium length is pointed and very hard, since it serves mainly as a support when climbing a bird on a tree trunk.

Variegated woodpecker

N how important this supporting role of the tail is, can be judged by the fact that for the period until the next molt, the steering feathers, being erased, are shortened by 10 mm or more! But the total length of the tail is 100 mm, the Great Spotted Woodpecker is a medium-sized bird: its body length is 23-26 cm, weight is about 100 g. This woodpecker lives in the forests of North Africa (northern Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), in Europe and on adjacent islands, in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor, in Siberia (except for the northern regions of the taiga) and Primorye, as well as in Kamchatka, Sakhalin, the Japanese and Kuril Islands, and on the Korean Peninsula. A woodpecker leads a sedentary lifestyle, but in the cold season makes wanderings. In the spring (in February, March, April) woodpeckers become especially loud and mobile. Males often make a “trill”. Sitting on the trunk, the male quickly hits the dry knot with its beak, and the branch vibrating under these blows produces a peculiar trill - “drum roll”, something like “fuck-t-ta ...”. This trill replaces the song of a large variegated woodpecker. You can hear her far even in the dense forest. On this "song" the female flies in and a pair is formed. The formed pair zealously defends its nesting area, expelling all other woodpeckers from it. Somewhere in the middle of this section, birds make a nest for themselves. For its device, a tree with soft or decaying wood is selected. The most commonly used aspen, less often alder, even less often birch, oak and other hardwood species. Usually on the trunk, at a height of 2-8 m from the ground - often under the hat of a fungus-tinder fungus, woodpeckers hollow out their hollows. Alternating alternately, the male and the female tirelessly hammer on the tree, splitting pieces of wood 2-4 cm long, which are immediately thrown down. On last year’s dried grass, and if the spring is late, on the snow near the trunk of the tree you can see fresh light wood chips, on which you can easily find a newly hollowed hollow. The hollow has a depth of 28-35 cm, the inlet - letlet has a diameter of 5-5.6 cm. At the end of April - in May, eggs are laid. Clutch usually consists of 5-7 shiny white eggs. Eggs are laid right on the bottom of the hollow; often the litter is heavily chopped pieces of wood. Both male and female incubate eggs alternately for 12-13 days. The chicks hatch blind and completely helpless, but with a well-developed calcaneus. The first days of life they sit quietly, the grown up chicks scream loudly, demanding food. From this cry, heard over 80-100 m, you can easily find their nest. Both adult birds take part in feeding the chicks. Chicks are very voracious, and parents fly to the nest with food every 2-4 minutes. The female usually feeds the chicks more often than the male. During the day, both adult birds bring food up to 300 times to the nest. Naturally, to collect a huge number of insects necessary for feeding the chicks, it is possible only with a significant area of \u200b\u200bthe forest. It is not surprising, therefore, that the hunting area of \u200b\u200ba pair of woodpeckers occupies about 15 hectares. Chicks spend three weeks in the nest. The first 25-30 days after departure from the nest, the entire brood is held together, and old birds first feed young, already well-flying birds. After some time, the young pass to an independent life and begin to wander widely. Woodpeckers fly well and quickly, describing a smooth arc in the air: flapping their wings several times, the bird rises to the top of the arc, then folds its wings and swiftly, like a thrown spear, flies forward, quickly losing height, then flaps its wings again, etc. However in all cases, they prefer to climb the tree trunk, using wings only to fly to a neighboring tree. Even when the bird is in danger, she is in no hurry to fly away. Noticing, for example, the approach of a person, the woodpecker seemed to be unintentionally, not betraying anything that he noticed danger, crawls over, continuing to search for something in the bumps of the bark, on the opposite side of the trunk and, rising up the trunk, only occasionally peeks out from behind it , as if by chance watching a person. If you try to go around the tree, the bird will again move so that there is a trunk between it and the person. If a person tries to approach a bird, it will fly to a neighboring tree, expressing its displeasure with a loud sharp cry. The woodpecker's voice spreads far through the forest and resembles something like a jerky “boom”, repeated separately, then several times in a row, when the bird worries. The woodpecker spends most of his time looking for food. In summer and early autumn, woodpeckers can be easily observed on a tree trunk. Ordinarily, a bird sits on a trunk at the base of a tree and begins to climb up in leaps, while doing spiral turns around the trunk. Climbing up, she carefully examines every gap, every unevenness of the cortex. If a bird notices something on thick branches, then it inspects them, usually from below, hanging from a branch and, again, leaning on its tail. Having examined in this way the trunk and large lateral branches to a height of 12-16 m, and sometimes even higher, the woodpecker flies to another tree. If, examining a tree, a woodpecker finds insects living under the bark, he uses his beak: the measured and loud “knock-knock-knock” is far away in the forest. With strong blows, the woodpecker breaks the bark or makes a funnel in it, exposing the passages of insects under the roots, and with a sticky long tongue that easily penetrates these passages, the bird extracts larvae and adult insects from under the bark. In autumn, the woodpecker’s method of obtaining food and its composition change. The bird picks a cone from the coniferous tree, clamps it into a niche natural or hollowed out by it by itself at the top of the shrunken trunk of the tree and strikes it with force with its beak. With the beak of a woodpecker, it opens the scales of the cone, extracts and eats the seeds. Usually, under such a woodpecker forge, a mountain of cones accumulates at the end of winter: 5000-7000 broken cones were found under separate forges. Each day, the woodpecker breaks up to 100 cones, and therefore, in order to provide themselves with food in the winter, each bird from the fall captures an individual site, the area of \u200b\u200bwhich varies from 5 to 15 ha depending on the yield of coniferous seeds and the number of conifers on the site. At each of these sites there are several dozen forges. Their individual sections of the bird protect and do not allow other woodpeckers in them. In early spring, woodpeckers, along with seeds, again begin to eat insects that emerged after wintering. And at the time of the beginning of sap flow, the woodpecker often makes a horizontal line of holes in the bark with a beak on the trunks and on tree branches and, when the juice appears, alternately applies a beak to each hole and drinks. Thus, in the diet of woodpeckers there is a pronounced seasonal change in feed. In autumn and winter, woodpeckers feed on the seeds of conifers, in spring and summer - on animal food. In large numbers, a large motley woodpecker eats ants: 300-500 insects were found in the stomachs of some dead birds. Quite often woodpeckers eat various beetles, especially those living under the bark, bark beetles and barbel, as well as weevils, leaf beetles, etc. The large variegated woodpecker is a useful bird. Hollowing hollows, which are not usually reused by woodpeckers themselves, they create housing for many other very useful hollow nests (for example, tits and flycatchers) that make nests in finished hollows. In addition, woodpeckers are able to extract and destroy pests dangerous to the forest, such as xylophagous insects (bark beetles, barbel, etc.), which have no enemies other than woodpeckers among birds. Only trees infected with pests are hammering a woodpecker, and therefore traces of its activity are signals indicating that the tree is affected and needs to be cut down. Eating coniferous seeds in winter, the large motley woodpecker does not prevent the self-renewal of these species, since during the winter it eats only a few percent of the seed crop.

Small Spotted Woodpecker / Dendrocopos minor

The motley small woodpecker is one of the smallest woodpeckers: it is only slightly larger in size than a sparrow. The color of the plumage, he is very similar to a large motley woodpecker. With all his habits, he also resembles his larger congener, but, unlike the latter, the small spotted woodpecker is more often found on lateral branches and thin branches of trees than on trunks. He is more mobile and when searching for food does not linger on the same tree for more than one minute.   In winter, thin peaks of young fir trees are often hollowed or picks out something in thin branches. He can’t grind the bumps with his weak beak. Its food consists solely of various beetles of the underlings - barbel, bark beetles and wood-boring ants.

Spotted small woodpecker

In nesting time, it is kept very secretive, but at another time it is quite loud. The voice of this bird sounds like a frequently repeated plaintive "Ki-Ki-Ki-Ki-Ki ...". Its small, neatly made low above the ground in the shrinking and decaying trunks of aspen or hollow alder are most willingly engaged in small insectivorous hollow-nesting birds. The small spotted woodpecker lives in deciduous and mixed forests in the north of Algeria, in Europe and on the adjacent islands, in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor and in the west of Iran, in Siberia (except for the north of the taiga), reaching the east to North Korea, Primorye, Sakhalin and Kamchatka.

Ginger Woodpecker / Micropternus brachyurus

The red-headed woodpecker got its name because the main color of the plumage is reddish-brown. Wings and tail with black transverse stripes. Bill is dark brown, legs are grayish brown. The eyes are brownish red. Coloring different birds  varies greatly: some individuals are red or rusty-red in color, while others are brown and dark chestnut. The thumb of this woodpecker is underdeveloped, and therefore its paws seem three-fingered. This is a small woodpecker: the body length of the bird is about 25 cm. All plumage of red woodpeckers (especially the head, chest and tail) is smeared with some kind of sticky substance. This substance is nothing but the juices of ants crushed by woodpeckers.

Red woodpecker

These insects, found in large numbers on trees where woodpeckers climb, are very aggressive, they cling to the plumage of a bird and try to bite. The woodpecker presses the ants by the friction of their hard plumage (especially the tail) about the roughness of the bark; the ants are crushed, and their juices are smeared over the body of the bird. Therefore, the body of woodpeckers has a peculiar specific smell formic acid. The constant proximity to ants, which in mass creep along the branches and trunks of trees, where birds collect their food, leads to another interesting feature. The tail of these birds is almost always decorated with more or fewer heads of large red (or fire, as they are also called) ants. These ants, grabbing something, no longer release their prey from the jaws, and even if they tear off the head of this insect, it will still hold what it has grasped. When woodpeckers climb along the trunks of mango trees, ants grab them by the tail feathers, die from the friction of the tail of the birds on the roughness of the bark, but their heads still remain on the beards of the feathers. This woodpecker lives along the eastern slopes of the Himalayas, on the Hindustan, Ceylon, Indochina and the southern provinces of China, inhabiting the valleys of lowland rivers and mountains to an altitude of 2000 m above sea level. Here the red-headed woodpecker keeps on the edges of the forest; it can often be found in tea gardens, on cultivated fields with rare bamboo trees, on banana plantations; however, he often settles in sparse areas of the forest, avoiding impenetrable jungle. The breeding season for this woodpecker lasts from February to June. The nests of these birds are wonderful - woodpeckers do not build them themselves, they nest in anthills! In Indochina, large tree ants of the genus Crematogaster live - fiery ants of the jungle. These ants arrange their nests in the crowns of trees at a height of 2 to 20 m from the ground. Outside, the ant nest is a mass of gray-brown color, most reminiscent of felt, cardboard or papier-mâché, but usually characterized by great strength and hardness. In the wall of this structure, the red-headed woodpecker makes a rounded hole about 5 cm in diameter. This hole leads into the internal cavity into which the female lays eggs. Strange as it may seem, woodpeckers always choose the largest and surely inhabited anthills for the device of this “nest in the nest”! And it is completely incomprehensible why large ants, terrible for all living things, do not touch either eggs, or chicks, or the hatching female herself! But the incubating female feeds on the pupae of ants, which she easily pecks, without rising from the eggs. The masonry of this woodpecker usually consists of 3 eggs. They are white in color, and their shell is thin and transparent. However, after some time from contact with formic acid secreted by insects, the shell darkens and the eggs become brownish. Red woodpeckers feed on various species of ants, which they collect in bulk on the trunks and branches of trees, as well as on the ground, where they often descend in search of food. But most often and in large numbers they eat ants of the genus Crematogaster. In early spring, these woodpeckers often visit banana plantations. Here, on the trunks of banana palms, birds make holes with beak strokes and drink sweet juice.

Three-Toed Woodpecker / Picoides tridactylus

The three-toed woodpecker is a beautiful, motley colored bird. Her back is white with wide black streaks, the nuft is brownish black, the tail is black with transverse white stripes along the edges of its apex. The wings are brownish-black with white streaks. The forehead, nape and back of the neck are black with white streaks on the forehead and nape, the sides of the head and neck are white. From the eye back, going down the side of the neck, there is a wide black stripe; the same black stripe extends from the base of the lower jaw along the sides of the throat and goiter and splits on the sides of the chest into large longitudinal black spots. The male has a yellow crown, the female has a gray hair. A characteristic feature of these birds is the absence of their first toe - they are three-fingered: two fingers facing forward and one back.

Three-toed woodpecker

This is a small woodpecker: the wing length is 12-13 cm. Three-toed woodpeckers are widespread in Central and Eastern Europe (except for the southern regions), in Siberia (reaching the north to the Arctic Circle, and east to North Korea, Primorye, Sakhalin and Kamchatka), and also in most parts of North America (absent only in the far north and southeastern United States). Inhabit vast and dense forests of the northern type (mainly coniferous), and in the south they are kept in mountain forests. This woodpecker starts breeding early: even at the northern borders of its distribution, already in February, the drum roll of a male gambler gently beating his beak on a dry female is often heard. Males continue to drum throughout the spring - until the end of May. During this period, three-toed woodpeckers are very lively, they chirp and often scream lingeringly. Hollows are most often arranged in larch trees, often in fir trees. Usually, the male and female hollow out hollow in decaying, dried or burnt trees and even in stumps, but often in undamaged trees. More often this hollow is located not far from the ground: at a height of 1-6 m, where 3-6 white eggs are laid. In June, you can still see young birds flying poorly over most of the range. After leaving the nest, the whole family first wanders amicably through the forest, then the brood breaks up. In winter, migrations reach large scales, and at this time most birds move far south of their nesting sites. The food for this woodpecker is wood insects, and in the autumn also seeds and berries. The three-fingered woodpecker obtains its food almost exclusively by chiselling, and catches open-living insects only during the period of feeding the chicks. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the stomachs of these birds there are always a large number of larvae, pupae and adult beetles living under the bark of trees, primarily larvae of bark beetles and barbel, as well as larvae of goldfish, weevils, cattails, etc. This bird is very voracious: for an incomplete winter day, one three-fingered woodpecker can tear off bark from a large spruce infected with bark beetles with beak blows. And according to rough estimates, it is known that on such a spruce there are about 10,000 bark beetle larvae! Even if the woodpecker does not find and eat all the bark beetles, they will die from winter frosts, falling in the snow with broken bark. The three-toed woodpecker is one of the most useful birds of the coniferous forest.

Woodpecker is a bird from the woodpecker family, which has about 220 species. The main habitat is Europe, and only 5 species live on the American continent.

Why doesn't a woodpecker have a headache?

The woodpecker feeds mainly on the larvae of bark beetles and insects, which it takes out from under the beautiful sections of the bark with the help of its tools. The beak is used for chiselling wood and expanding holes in trunks and branches, as well as for peeling pine cones. And with a long thin tongue, like tweezers, he pulls out of the holes of insects. The four fingers of the woodpecker’s paws have very sharp, tenacious claws and are arranged in pairs — forward and backward, which allows it to be firmly fixed on the tree trunk. A rigid tail makes it possible to firmly abut against the trunk to form a strong support. After all, during work, the woodpecker needs to have something to rely on, otherwise it will simply be demolished after the first blows.

The frequency of these beats is quite high, and it is not rare to hear the drum roll, which this forest musician taps on top of a dry tree.

The cranial box of this bird protects the brain from sharp and frequent strokes. In addition to a strong head bone, there is a whole softening system, represented by additional fluids and sinuses.

Variety of species

According to scientists, there are more than two hundred different species of woodpeckers.

The most common are the large and small spotted woodpecker.

Besides them there is also:

• large pointed-winged;
• small pointed-winged;
• yellow-chested;
• white-backed;
• red-bellied;
• brown-headed;
• yellow cap;
• and many other species.

All of them are often called simply - motley woodpeckers.

How woodpeckers live

These birds are considered sedentary. They do not fly to warmer countries for the winter. The maximum that they can do is a short flight to another forest, where there will be food all winter. The way they are fed allows them to winter in the same places, because in winter, when it is not possible to find insects, they can eat the seeds of pine trees. To do this, they arrange the so-called forges. Having found a suitable fork or gap, the woodpecker inserts a pine cone into it as a holder and, bending its scales, takes out the seeds.

A woodpecker makes a hollow for its nest, finding depressions on dry trees and increasing them with its beak.

In spring, males make real duels on drums. Having found a dry standing trunk, the duelist chooses a place on it that is as dry as possible in the sun. It is it that makes the loudest and loudest sound when a musician begins to quickly knock on him with his beak. It is these fractions that we hear in the spring forest.

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No forest is complete without this bird. Loud and rhythmic sounds of woodpecker fractions are heard throughout the district, especially in spring. If you look closely at the trees, you can see it. This bird is not shy and sometimes flies to “make noise” in gardens, on trees under windows or telegraph poles. She is very remarkable and bright, it is impossible to confuse her with anyone else. But species of woodpeckers can not be distinguished at first sight. Especially common in our country is a large motley woodpecker. Let us dwell on it in more detail.

Great Spotted Woodpecker: Description

The fact that this bird is generally difficult to confuse with anyone is due primarily to its specific appearance and method of food production. The large spotted woodpecker is often compared in size with a blackbird, they are approximately the same. The length of his body on average ranges from 22 to 27 centimeters, females, as a rule, less than males. The mass of the bird is small - only 60-100 grams. It is not for nothing that the great motley woodpecker got such a name, as it has a very bright, contrasting color of plumage in black and white and a red (and sometimes pink) undertail.

Male from female can be distinguished by the color of the nape of the neck. All young individuals have a red cap on their heads; with age, it disappears. only males remain on the back of the head. The top of the head turns black. The cheeks of the bird, forehead, and belly are white, depending on the habitat, their hue can change from bright and clean to beige or almost brown. The large motley woodpecker has a very decent wingspan, reaching almost half a meter (42-47 centimeters). It is also worth noting the shape of the tail. It is pointed (wedge-shaped), has an average length; very tough, since it plays the role of a support when the bird moves on its paws, typical for woodpeckers - zygodactyl, that is, two front fingers are opposed to two rear. The average bird is about 9 years old.

Great Spotted Woodpecker: habitat

This is a very common bird with a wide habitat - from the Canary Islands to Kamchatka and Japan. Most often, birds lead a sedentary lifestyle, less often - a nomad. The latter is mainly associated with habitats that are unfavorable in terms of food supply, so birds are forced to migrate (invasion) to neighboring regions. The large motley woodpecker (photo can be seen in the article) is very undemanding to the place of residence and takes root almost everywhere where the trees grow, from taiga forests to city parks. Surprisingly, the choice depends not only on the country in which the birds live, but even on the regions. So, in Siberia and the Urals, the woodpecker chooses coniferous and mixed forests, but with a predominance of pines, and in the north-west of the country he prefers pine forests, spruce.

What does a woodpecker eat in summer?

Many from school still remember the so-called. These include the wolf and the woodpecker. The bird prefers to settle in forests, where there are many old and rotten trees. Woodpeckers have a very diverse diet. The predominance of plant or animal food in it depends on the season. It is noteworthy that males and females earn their livelihood in various territories, and sometimes even in separate forests. Spring-summer diet consists mainly of insects and their larvae. First of all, these are, of course, various beetles, including those that feed on wood, as well as their larvae: barbel, bark beetles, stag beetles, weevils, ladybugs, and goldfish. The big spotted woodpecker makes 130 beats per minute with its beak. This is a fairly powerful force, not a single bug or worm will go unnoticed. Also, butterflies, including furry ones, their caterpillars, aphids, and ants are included in the diet of the bird. The big spotted woodpecker does not disdain carrion, if there is such an opportunity. It was also found that sometimes these birds ruin the nests of small songbirds.

What do woodpeckers eat in autumn and winter?

In the autumn-winter period, the vegetable prevails. It includes seeds of conifers, acorns, nuts. Of interest is a method of extracting seeds from a cone. It is common to all woodpeckers, but this view brought it to perfection. Initially, the woodpecker picks a bump, then carries it in its beak to a pre-selected location - the anvil, which, in essence, is a clip or slot in the upper part of the tree trunk. The bird beats with a beak on the cone with all its force, and then proceeds to the meal - peeling off the scales, extracts the seeds. One large speckled woodpecker can make about 50 such anvils, but usually uses two or three. Therefore, at the end of winter, under a single tree, a whole hill of cones and scales can accumulate.

When is the mating season for woodpeckers?

Monogamy is characteristic of these birds. They reach puberty by the end of the first year of their life. It is noteworthy that after the end of the mating season, couples can stay together until next spring. Or they break up and hibernate separately, but on next year  reunited again.

The behavior of birds during the mating season is very remarkable. Its first signs appear in late February - early March and continue to increase until the middle of the first spring month. Birds begin to choose a pair. Males behave extremely noisy, loudly talk and shout aggressively. Females respond to them, but less noticeably. Around the middle of May, when the pairs have already been decided, the construction of nests begins.

Woodpecker Nesting

The tree in which the hollow will be located is selected by the male. It should not be rotten, but with soft wood (for example, aspen or alder, less often oak or birch, larch).

The large motley woodpecker (photo above), living in deciduous forests, prefers to make a new hollow annually. If its habitat is dense conifers, then the bird returns to the old. The hollow, as a rule, is located at a height of up to eight meters and has a depth of about 25-35 cm, and a diameter of about 10. The male is mainly engaged in construction, and the female only sometimes replaces it, in time it takes up to two weeks. Woodpeckers lay their eggs in mid-spring, around the end of April. In clutch there are from 5 to 7 small eggs of white color, glossy. Both parents take part in the incubation, but at night - only the male. Chicks hatch naked, helpless and blind for 10-12 days.

Small and large spotted woodpecker: differences

• By the nature of the color of plumage.  In a small species, the transverse strip of black on the cheek does not reach the back of the head and is interrupted by a white spot. In addition, it does not have a pink or reddish undertail. But on the head of the small woodpecker there is a hat - red with a black border for males and white for females.
• The big spotted woodpecker and the small spotted woodpecker are different   by the nature of the sounds made.  In the first species, the fraction is very short and lasts about 0.6 seconds, includes 12-13 strokes, but it is almost impossible to distinguish them, since they merge into one continuous sound. In addition, it quickly loses ringing, starts loudly, but quickly fades out. The large motley woodpecker makes 130 beats per minute, sometimes its fraction is heard sometimes at a distance of one and a half kilometers. The sounds made by the small woodpecker are more like the voice of songbirds, they are more lingering. And his fraction is also longer, but not as loud as the first species, lasts an average of 1.5 seconds.
• Small Spotted Woodpecker slightly smallerIts length is approximately 14-15 centimeters.
• They differ in preferences for the choice of habitat.  The small spotted woodpecker prefers deciduous and mixed forests, the banks of ponds, and swamps. Tries to avoid dark conifers.

Does the woodpecker have any enemies?

It would seem that such a bird cannot fundamentally have enemies, because, having a powerful beak, it can well stand up for itself. But in reality, everything is somewhat different. Woodpecker Attack Data birds of prey  although few, but still they are. Basically, they are endangered by sparrows, goshawks, and peregrine falcons in the lowlands.

Of the land predators, it is worth noting the marten and ermine. Even the nests of woodpeckers, which, it would seem, are hidden and protected, are sometimes ruined by squirrels, dormouse and (a kind of bats). It happens that woodpeckers are crowded out of old hollows by starlings.

Fitness woodpecker to environmental conditions

Almost all animals and birds have a certain set of characteristics that arose as a result of adaptation to factors of the outside world. The big spotted woodpecker is no exception. Habitat adaptability features are shown below.

• Clutching claws on the paws help to easily stay on a tree trunk or on thin branches.
• A rigid wedge-shaped tail prevents slipping down the trunk; it is more suited for climbing trees than for flying.
• A long strong beak helps to pierce the bark of trees and make hollows in them for nesting, as well as obtain food.
• A long, thin and sticky tongue helps to get insects from the most inaccessible places.

Each of us from early childhood is familiar with birds, whose amazing and distinctive ability is almost continuous knock on wood. Woodpecker, and this is exactly what the name of this bird belongs to the family of woodpeckers, together with vertices. In nature, there are about 20 species of woodpeckers. Each of these species has its own characteristics, but there are many similarities between them.

Features of living in nature

Habitat woodpecker birdscelebrated almost everywhere. The only exceptions are the polar regions, the territory of Australia and some oceanic islands.

These are mostly sedentary. They can migrate to another place only for one reason - lack of food. After migration to their native places woodpeckernot returning.

In small years, we know that woodpeckers are the real orderlies in the forest. Thanks to the efforts of these large workers, a huge number of harmful insects and their larvae are destroyed every day, which otherwise would have done incredible harm to forest and garden plantings.

For their hollow, these amazing people choose not a living tree, but one in which there are no more signs of life. Woodpeckers choose forests for habitation because their whole life is closely connected with trees.

They like taiga, mixed forests, as well as other green spaces. There are species of woodpeckers that, for lack of a tree, can settle in a large cactus.

Some species of woodpeckers prefer to live in cacti.

Earthen woodpeckers  and they feel quite good in the steppe and in the desert. The uniform knock of a bird coming from everywhere indicates that the woodpecker is working. And this means that many plantings will be saved. Death of woodpeckersthat occurs due to the fault of a hawk, snake, marten, lynx and human can lead to the fact that harmful insects will become more and more.

And their increased number is likely to affect the general condition of green spaces. Therefore, a person should in every way protect these birds. Some time will pass and the rescued nurse of the forest will save a huge number of trees, because everything in this world is regular and interconnected.

Earthen woodpecker

Bird description

The length of the middle woodpecker reaches about 25 cm. The birds weigh no more than 100 g. But there are exceptions among them. For example, the length of the muller woodpecker is about 50 cm, and its weight is more than 500 g. There are among them the smallest representatives, the size of which is equal to the size of a hummingbird. In length, such birds grow no more than 8 cm, and they weigh 7 g.

The most important part of the body of woodpeckers is their strong, distinguished by great sharpness and strength of the beak. On the feathered nostrils, bristles are visible, which are their reliable protection against shavings flying from trees.

The skull also has a fairly strong structure. She saves from a possible concussion. Feathered wings have an average length. Due to their sharpness and small size, woodpeckers can easily fly between thickets of trees.

Four fingers are visible on the short legs, which are equally directed in opposite directions. An exception is the species of woodpeckers called three-toed. With the help of such a structure of paws, it is quite easy for a bird to stay in a vertical position on a tree throughout its hard work and also to move around it.

The plumage of woodpeckers has a very rigid structure, especially in the tail area. Its color is the most diverse. Most often, their upper part is painted in dark or colorful tones, the bottom is slightly lighter (white or gray).

The head of all woodpeckers is decorated with a beautiful red cap. This is their other distinguishing feature. There are also species of woodpeckers in which more golden, green and white tones predominate in the color.

Females from males have some differences. Usually spotted woodpecker- this is a male. The color of females is dominated by more calm neutral colors. They don’t have such a bright cap on their heads and tail.

Most often found in nature big woodpecker.Its length is about 27 cm, weighs up to 100 g. The color of the bird's feathers is in black and white. A small area on the back of the head and in the area of \u200b\u200bthe nails that are painted in red or pink makes the bird more colorful than all the other brothers.

Lifestyle

These birds prefer solitary existence. Only during the nesting period they try to create pairs. There are woodpeckers, for example, acorns, who prefer to live in packs.

As for the feathered votes, they have different ones depending on the species. But mostly woodpeckers do not like to make sounds. They communicate through a fraction knocked out by birds on a tree. Its sounds change depending on the type of wood, humidity in the air and many other factors.

Listening to the knock and singing of a woodpecker

With the help of these sounds they separate their territories, and also attract the attention of the opposite sex. Therefore, the often heard knock of woodpeckers on a tree indicates that the birds have entered the mating season.

The flight is easy and laid back. Only they use this skill not so often. Basically, they are content with fluttering between closely standing trees and crawling along the trunks, resting on hard tails.

Pictured is a green woodpecker

Danger does not make you quickly hide from a place. They move to the opposite side of the tree and calmly watch from there what is happening. Only a very close distance between it and the predator makes the bird fly away.

Nutrition

The woodpeckers menu includes insects. They get them in a variety of ways. Those species that prefer to live on trees get their food from under their bark. The bird does this with utmost care, I try to damage the tree itself as little as possible.

With a strong beak, the woodpecker makes a small hole in the cortex, then it pulls out an insect larva from there with a very long tongue. It is worth noting that the length of the woodpecker's tongue is equal to the length of its several beaks. There are special spikes in his tongue, with the help of which the bird catches its prey.

How does a woodpecker understand in which place he should make a hole? Everything is very simple. possesses excellent hearing. The woodpecker hears the slightest rustle under the bark of a tree. Woodpeckers who live in the steppe or desert seek food for themselves exclusively on the surface of the earth.

Woodpeckers' favorite treats are caterpillars, larvae, ants,. In addition to all this animal food, they feed on plant foods. Most often, woodpeckers living in cold regions resort to this type of food.

They completely replace the absence of insects with nuts, seeds of pine and spruce. There is a woodpecker, whose favorite treats are acorns. There are such types of these birds for which it is very important to get drunk tree sap.

Reproduction and longevity

Woodpeckers can reproduce once or twice a year. Throughout the season, the couple remains faithful to each other. The mating season of birds begins in February. It was at this time that their tapping on the trees was most heard. Thus, the male tries to attract the attention of the female, and the pair already formed protects his territory with a knock.

For housing, woodpeckers choose hollows made by their own beak. In a strange home, they try not to settle. Birds change their hollows every year. Abandoned woodpecker hollows are to the taste of other birds, which with great pleasure settle in them.

A pair of woodpeckers spends about 7 days to improve their housing. As for earthen woodpeckers, they feel great in dug minks. Usually their depth reaches 1 m.

In a well-maintained dwelling, the female lays from 2 to 9 eggs. The incubation period lasts about 18 days. After that, completely naked, blind and helpless chicks are born, which both parents have been caring for about 5 weeks.

At an early age, woodpecker chicks are incredible gluttony. This quickly gives them strength. About a month the chicks need in order to grow stronger and become on the wing. After that, they are selected from the nest and lead an independent lifestyle on a par with adults. The life span of a bird is 8-12 years.

In the photo gray-haired woodpecker

Not so often you can meet woodpeckers in captivity because it is not easy to provide them with their favorite food. In order for the bird to feel at ease and comfortable, it needs a large enclosure with vegetation, under whose bark you can find food for yourself. This bird can cause injury with its strong beak if you behave with it inadvertently.