Monday 18 May 2015

Last May I saw this woodpecker and young

I thought I'd sort through the photos I've been taking over the last couple of years. I was surprised to find over 5,000 on my Mac, not all of which it has to be said are really worth keeping. Before digital photography and the low costs of digital storage the lover of wildlife would have to rely on notebook observations or memory to recall past observations. Lacking the discipline to keep a notebook (I've tried) and having a poor memory, digital photos provide a handy alternative as most software will automatically log the date when pictures were taken.

Well, I didn't do any sorting out of the photos because it occurred to me that it would be interesting to see what I had photographed last May and I came across these. They brought back memories of standing beneath trees looking for woodpecker nests. Doing this randomly is a good waste of time and relies on chance. The trick I use it to listen first for the terse 'tchik' of the adult woodpecker signalling its approach to the hole where the nest is. The second sound is the call of the young which sounds like rapid repeating of 'cheep-cheep' the like a rasping or the sawing of wood when the chicks are more mature. Then look. The great spotted woodpecker is not a big bird - perhaps the size of a blackbird - and moves fast. It will often circle the nest and appears to be sensitive to the presence of people and dogs below. This means that if you can't easily locate the hole in the tree you may have to be patient and keep watching and listening.

My patience was rewarded last May when the woodpecker alighted next to the nest hole and shortly after poking its head in to feed the young and flying off again, a chick popped its head out as if to say 'what, no more?'. Click on the images to enlarge them and get a better view.

This was in an ash tree and you'll see many holes in them where nests have been but the chances are that it will be a jackdaw you see coming and going rather than a woodpecker.

My camera isn't very well suited to this type of photography but I'm glad I took these pictures and will be looking out for the woodpecker nests again this month up the Welcombe Hills.



One final thought about standing underneath trees looking up for nests. When we first came to the area I'd been standing underneath a tree for some time trying to see where the sound of the woodpecker was coming from. My unusual behaviour aroused the curiosity of a man with a red setter. 'What are you doing?' he asked. 'Looking for a woodpecker nest', I replied. Ian and I have been good friends ever since.

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