Great Spotted Woodpecker Essentials

The great spotted has become the most familiar woodpecker due to regularly visiting bird-tables in observers' gardens.

When searching for food a Great Spotted Woodpecker usually perches on the trunk then works upwards and often from side to side. During the ascent it smartly taps the bark, prising off fragments and frequently extracting food from crevices with the tip of its sticky tongue.

During spring and summer, it feeds largely on insects, especially ants and the larvae of wood-boring beetles. Holes may be chiselled up to four inches deep. But in autumn and winter, they like to feed on a variety of fruit, seeds and nuts.

Both sexes drum on trees, starting in January and continuing until late June. Usually, a new nest is bored each spring rarely less than 10 to 12ft from the ground and often considerably higher. Both parent woodpeckers excavate and this task occupies between two and three weeks. The creamy white eggs, five to seven in number, are laid during the second half of May.

If you want a Great Spotted Woodpecker in your garden there's no better food than Peanuts and suet to put out.

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Great Spotted Woodpecker Essentials

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