Knock on wood

Our beloved, bark-drumming woodpeckers are guardians of ancient broad-leaved woodlands, busy ecosystem engineers and keen consumers of ant porridge, discovers Vicky Liddell

- Vicky Liddell

ON a clear February morning, the unmistakable hammering of a great spotted woodpecker is one of the first signs of spring.

With its distinctive pied plumage and flash of red under the tail, the great spotted is the most common of our three native woodpeckers, followed by the much chunkier green woodpecker with its jaunty red cap and loud laughing call. The lesser spotted woodpecker is, as its name implies, smaller. However, the name has recently taken on a tragic meaning, as their dramatic decline means that they’re hardly spotted at all. A fourth species, the wryneck, was once quite common, but now rarely nests in the UK and is no longer considered a resident.

Woodpeckers are members of the Picidae, an ancient family of birds in the Piciformes order that began to evolve 60 million years ago, a little after the mass dinosaur extinction. All woodpeckers drum, but the great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)—literally ‘tree striker’—is by far the loudest. The drumming is carried out by both males and females, yet it is the male, distinguished by a red patch on the back of its head, that is the most insistent. Each strike of beak on timber is a message to females and any woodpecker in the vicinity that a certain territory is theirs. In their search for something suitably resonant, urban great spotted woodpeckers have been known to use gutters, drainpipes and even satellite dishes. One bird selected a publicaddress system at a racecourse—which was perfectly located opposite a rival male—and another made 200 holes in a Grade I-listed church near Braintree, Essex, until it resembled a sieve. In Devizes, Wiltshire, a collapsed telegraph pole thought to be a casualty of Storm Eunice was later linked to a huge woodpecker hole.