A great opportunity presented itself recently when we discovered an active Great-spotted Woodpecker's nest in my friend's woodland. When they are incubating its quite hard to find an active nest because they are quite secretive. Even though its not hard to find woodpecker holes in trees, some are from previous years and others have been worked on in the current year and then been abandoned when the breeding birds have chosen another hole. I thought I had cracked it when I saw a bird disappear in to a fresh looking hole andwe set up hides to overlook the tree. I spent hours watching but only occasionally saw a bird entering. I put this down to one of the birds spending hours incubating before being relieved by it's partner. Then we realised that we were watching the wrong hole all along because a bird was arriving constantly and entering a hole much higher in the same tree!
This was a mystery, I still have no idea what was going on and have no idea why the bird was from time to time going in and out of a different hole. Incubation is relatively short and eggs hatch after only 12 days but the youngsters stay in the nest for around 3 weeks. It seems that these young have a few more days before they fledge because as you can see in the above, the feathers have yet to fully grow and the beak is not fully formed yet. There should be some much better photo opportunities in a few days just immediately and prior to fledging. At the moment the chicks are very noisy and are constantly calling. This rises to an excited crescendo when the parents arrive with food. When the chicks are at this stage their nests should be easy to locate.
You can tell the male from the female by the red patch on the nape which is absent in the female but weirdly, youngsters have a red forehead which is absent in adults. Iterestingly, therefore, newly fledged Great-spotted Woodpeckers are more colourful than their parents. I can't think of any other specie where this is the case. Just to summarise, you will see three differently marked Great-spotted Woodpeckers. Red on the nape, a male, no red on the nape, a female and red on the front of the head is a newly fledged youngster... either male or female.
This is an interesting photo because it shows the male leaving the nest burrow with a beak full of fecal material which is collected from within the nest burrow and then dropped away from the nest hole. I have yet to see the female at this nest site. Quite why this is I have no idea. Is the female in the nest burrow, brooding the chicks, quite possibly? The male is constantly bringing food to the nest but so far I have had no sight of the female. It could mean that the female has unfortunately succumbed to a predator and the male is doing a grand job feeding the chicks with no assistance?
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