Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great Spotted Woodpecker:
As a garden bird enthusiast, there are few sights more captivating than a great spotted woodpecker flashing into view. Sleek and dapper, they dart into gardens, alight at breakneck speed and feed in improbably acrobatic positions. Of the three species of woodpecker found in Britain, the great spotted woodpecker is the most likely to be seen in our gardens at any time of the year. The great spotted woodpecker ( Dendrocopos major ) is a medium-sized woodpecker with pied black and white plumage and a red patch on the lower belly. Males and young birds also have red markings on the neck or head.
Did you know:
Great spotted woodpeckers take a wide variety of foods in gardens, happily hammering peanuts, chiselling suet-blocks or clearing trays of mealworms. As long as they can get a good grip on a feeder and can reach the food inside, they will sample most things.
A woodpecker's tongue is so long that it wraps around its skull to protect its brain from over 1000g of acceleration when it's hammering away. The tongue can protrude some 40mm beyond the tip of its bill - so not many garden bird foods are out of their reach.
The Great spotted woodpecker is widely distributed across northern parts of the northern hemisphere, an area that stretches from the UK all the way to Japan. Interestingly in the last few years, the Great Spotted Woodpecker has started to nest in Ireland for the first time.
Great spotted woodpeckers have only one brood a year. The average lifespan is 2 years, but the maximum known age for a great spotted woodpecker is just over 11 years.
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