Bijdrage voor een Engelstalige site, van bomen-volgers. Het idee erachter is om 12 maanden lang 1 boom te volgen. Wij hebben de grote wilg in de achtertuin gekozen.
Easy to spot in the bare willow tree. This male great spotted woodpecker lives in the tree in the back of our garden. Once you know how they sound, you can hear them a lot: at first I thought a black bird was making a “one-syllable alarm call ” . Again and again. But it turned out to be the regular sound of the gread spotted woodpecker. And with the feeder filled with peanuts it is also not difficult to spot them. Around mid-januari, I took this foto of a single male. Today I saw a pair together. And last summer we saw a familie of five. We noticed that for quite a while after fledging the young woodpeckers stayed together. An old, rough stemmed willow tree is a perfect living area for these flamboyant birds.
For the first time this year we heared the drumming sound of the woodpecker. Just once on januari 16th.
See also:
tree following 1
tree following 2
What a lovely bird to spot. And I love the way it’s easy to tell the male and female and young ones apart. I’m sure you know – female head all black, male red on the back of the head and young ones orange-red on top.
I haven’t seen one in our garden lately, but last summer we had the pleasure of watching a male feeding two juveniles.
May your tree and birds bring you much pleasure this year!
All the best 🙂
So you may be following birds as well as a tree–that will be interesting.
how nice to have a family grow in your tree, though I expect a lot of drumming can be a a bit too much, Frances
The woodpecker is a welcome visitor to our garden and the peanut feeder.