Great-Spotted Woodpecker story

In 2010, a male and female Great-Spotted Woodpecker visited our garden on a regular basis, getting food for their young. This photo is of a very scruffy looking adult female.

We did not find the nest site, but we we're lucky enough to find a few young Great-Spotted Woodpeckers on our feeders in early July. We saw two juveniles on our feeders at one time. This photo shows one of the baby woodpeckers on our nut feeder. The obvious difference between adult and juvenile is the peach colour on the lower body and the red cap on its head.  

This year (2011), the adult male and female returned in April and started taking food off to their nest in early May. However, after a while, the female appeared to be the only bird still feeding the young. We have not seen the male again to this date (31/05/2011), so the female was left to do double the work. This photo is of the male bird (with the red marking on the back of it's head). Hopefully, it went off to another nest to help raise more young.

I followed the flight path of the female Woodpecker from our feeders into a wooded area by the river across the road from our house and a few days later, we located a whole in a tree with a noisy young Woodpecker calling inside. The following morning, Dad and I went back and sat down with our bins and my camera and saw the female woodpecker feed it's young a number of times.

Video of the adult female feeding it's young,  then flying back to our garden for food.