Great Spotted Woodpecker

How to recognise it

• Two long white shoulder patches and a red vent
• Glossy blue-black above, white face sides, black stripes from shoulder to bill base and breast
• Males have a red nape patch, females no red on the head, juveniles a red crown
• Flies in clear rising and falling arcs

Call and song

The call is a sharp "kik", which can be repeated as a wooden rattling "krrarraarr" when the bird is disturbed. The drumming is faster than in other woodpeckers in the area, about 10 to 16 strokes per second in often repeated one-second bursts. Both sexes drum, but the male does so far more often.

Where and when

In Sweden it lives mainly in deciduous and mixed woodland, sometimes coniferous forest, from Skåne to Lapland. In the far north it is less common or rare. It is reported from all 21 counties and most often from December to February. Drumming is heard from late winter and above all in early spring.

Food and behaviour

It eats beetles, ants, aphids and other insects, berries such as bilberries and lingonberries, and sometimes nestlings and eggs. In winter it feeds mainly on seeds from spruce and pine cones, which it hacks open on an anvil, and readily visits bird tables for suet balls and peanuts. It holds a territory of about 5 hectares all year, defended mainly by the male.