Types of woodpeckers. Woodpecker bird: description with photos, videos and pictures, where it lives and winters, what it eats, what is the use of woodpeckers for nature. Great spotted woodpecker: habitat

Our woodpeckers are among the useful birds. The harm they cause - damage to wood, eating ants, destruction of seeds - is negligible, especially in comparison with the benefits that they bring, exterminating the most dangerous pests of the forest. Special studies have shown that even in lean years for pine seeds, the largest spotted woodpecker in our country, which feeds exclusively on the seeds of coniferous trees all autumn and winter, is capable of destroying only a few percent of their total stock. All other species of our woodpeckers are insectivorous. Many of them are, in general, rare birds.

All species of real woodpeckers recognize and call each other in the spring with the help of the so-called drum trill, which arises from the frequent blows of the beak on a dry tree. However, each trunk or bough has its own sound. Therefore, the species-identifying elements of the drum roll are the frequency of the beak strikes and the total duration of the trill.

Great spotted woodpecker

The large spotted woodpecker, numerous everywhere, is easy to recognize both in appearance and in its drum trill. It is always short, consists of 10-12 strokes and lasts less than a second. At the beginning it sounds harsh, towards the end it weakens. Separate blows are not distinguishable and merge into a common crack. This woodpecker is the size of a thrush, it is colorfully painted: the back is black, the shoulders are white, the undertail and the back of the head are red. Females, unlike males, do not have a red color on their heads.

white-backed woodpecker

A similar white-backed woodpecker is recognizable by its white back and black shoulders, as well as by the color of the crown, which is red in males. In females it is black. The drum trill of this woodpecker is quite special. It does not have a sharp beginning and end and lasts about two seconds. Its components, about 30 beats, are clearly distinguishable, and the whole trill gives the impression of a musical phrase. The white-backed woodpecker is associated in winter with birch stands. If a birch trunk is heavily infested with larvae of birch sapwood and barbels, the woodpecker hammers at it for almost the whole day. Around the tree on which the white-backed woodpecker fed, wood dust, pieces of birch bark and rotten wood are usually lying around.

Lesser spotted woodpecker

The colorfully colored Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is easily recognizable by its tiny size. This is the smallest of our woodpeckers, a little larger than a sparrow - just a baby, and meeting with him is always pleasant. This woodpecker is trusting and lets you get close. He often gives out his presence with a high, unhurried squeak - repeated several times in a row "pee-bee-bee-bee-bee". The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker emits a relatively short, very often repeated trill. For his "game" sometimes uses the horizontal branches of large trees. In this case, it drums with its beak down, which other species of woodpeckers do not do. Flight, like all woodpeckers, is undulating. In winter, it adheres to deciduous low forests, floodplains, gardens and parks. Sometimes it flies even to large cities.

three-toed woodpecker

The three-toed woodpecker should be looked for in middle-aged spruce forests. During feeding, he sits for a long time on the same large tree, eating various bark beetles (engravers, printers) and their larvae.

Middle spotted woodpecker

The middle spotted woodpecker, living in the zone of mixed forests and oak forests, extracts insects from the surface of trunks, from cracks and folds of the bark. He rarely hammers wood.

black woodpecker

The black woodpecker, or yellow, is the most colorful of all woodpeckers, attracting attention with its appearance and voice. His presence in the forest always pleases, and not only because when you meet him, the thought flashes: “It means that large trees are still preserved in the forests in which he can nest!” The very appearance of this bird is pleasing, at first glance awkward and unusual, but possessing an original attractive force. It is difficult for me to say what exactly is the unusualness and attractiveness of the black woodpecker. Everything in it, perhaps, is unusual: black plumage, some kind of wild look of almost colorless eyes with a very special pupil shape, the habit of peeking out from behind a tree trunk, a huge light beak that a woodpecker wields like a carpenter with a chisel. In search of insects, he sometimes crushes huge old stumps and gouges large holes in tree trunks. There are cases when a black woodpecker got inside houses boarded up for the winter, making large holes in thick fresh boards and ate insects wintering in the house, including cockroaches. How, one wonders, could he guess that insects live in the house? It is also unclear what sense organs the black woodpecker is guided by when, gouging holes in the form of funnels in large spruce trees, it finally gets to the ants that live in the rotten wood of a thick tree. Is he looking at the tree, tapping, or maybe sniffing around? In a word, not everything is clear in the biology and behavior of the black woodpecker, although quite a lot of articles have been written about it. Of particular interest are his voice reactions. They are more varied than other woodpeckers. The trill lasts about 3 seconds. In this case, the individual blows that make up the fraction are clearly distinguishable. They follow one another at a speed of 16 times per second. The whole fraction sounds like a long rolling "rrrrrr ...", fading at the end. Focusing on it, sometimes it is possible to approach the woodpecker for quite a while. near distance and look at it with binoculars. Being frightened, the black woodpecker on the fly always gives a characteristic voice. This is either a song - a loud fanging “kly-kly-kly-kly ...”, usually emitted in spring, in the nesting area, both on the fly and on a tree, or an interrupted frequent vocal trill “prpr ... prprprp ... plpr ...”, according to the sound of which is easy to determine the direction of flight of a woodpecker. It can be heard in all seasons, but most often in autumn and winter. Apparently, this is a woodpecker species call. It is only released on the fly. At the end of the voice trill, one has only to wait a little, a long, mournful, loud plaintive cry of “weaving”, repeated several times, will surely be heard. What is the meaning of this cry? Territory security? Or maybe a cry of loneliness? It is perceived by the human ear as a call to its own kind. In any case, having issued a signal, the woodpecker listens for a long time, and having heard the answer, flies up, is interested. However, black woodpeckers prefer to stay alone throughout the autumn and part of the winter. Maybe they still maintain voice contact with each other, but at a great distance? How else can one explain the onset of pair formation in the middle of winter? All these questions still need to be clarified.

All the woodpeckers listed above belong to the group of so-called gouging woodpeckers, which get their food mainly by gouging. Their drum trill became the main means of communication during the mating season and arose, apparently, on the basis of sounds accompanying chiselling in the process of foraging. They don't have a song. It was preserved only in the black woodpecker and, to some extent, in the lesser spotted woodpecker.

Gray-haired, green woodpecker

Gray-haired and green woodpeckers are much less likely to hammer tree trunks. They are similar in their food specialization. They feed mainly on ants, which are obtained by digging anthills. This was reflected in the nature of their spring communications. They use voice communications - a song that is well expressed in all species of low-pitched woodpeckers. Drum trill is published by them less frequently. Most often, these woodpeckers are found in mixed or deciduous forests, as well as in parks. Related to woodpeckers wryneck, which will be discussed later, does not hammer tree trunks and only sings in the spring. The drum trill is not typical for her at all.

Usually, birds of related species have well-distinguished songs. Singing species of woodpeckers cry similarly in spring. Their song has the same structure and is a series of sounds, sometimes very similar to different types.

green woodpecker , for example, in the spring it screams almost the same as the zhelna, and untrained ears may not distinguish their voices. Sitting motionless on the trunk or branch of a tree, closer to its top, the green woodpecker makes a series of identical sounds “kui-kui-kui…” for a long time and often. The whole song lasts about 5 seconds, and during this time the woodpecker manages to play its “kui” 20 times. After a short break, the second song is heard, then the third, and so on. Having sung, the woodpecker can let it get pretty close to itself. If you catch it in the field of view of binoculars, your eyes will present an unusual beautiful bird in luxurious green-yellow plumage. This is a male. It is noticeably larger than the big motley, and the top of its head is red. It can be distinguished from the female by the whiskers, which are also red in him, while those of the female are black. The spring cry of the female is similar to the voice of the male, but it sounds less frequently. On the fly, the green woodpecker, like the black one, almost always emits a very loud, sometimes interrupted, like a machine-gun burst, the cry “gyugyugyugyugyugyu-gyugyu”. It is especially often heard in late July - early August. This call, combined with a deep undulating flight, allows you to accurately identify the type of woodpecker.

The grey-haired woodpecker, which is in many ways similar to the green one, but is somewhat duller in color, is more mobile and usually does not sit in one place for a long time. His spring song is distinguished by uneven intervals between the sounds made, which gradually decrease towards the end of the period of each song. “Kyu-kyu-kukyu-kyukukyu-kyu-kyu” - like this, approximately, a gray-haired woodpecker will shout in one place, then fly to another, where it will sing again several times, etc. He willingly flies up to imitate his own voice and allows himself to be examined. The coloring of the head is a sure distinguishing feature of this, also generally green, woodpecker: the male has a small red spot on the forehead, while the female is devoid of red.

The species of woodpeckers that I introduced you to live in forests of various types, but in the park they can be found all together.

Who has not heard the sonorous drumming of a woodpecker in the forest in the spring. With their beaks, these birds are better at signaling their mating intentions than with the help of an ordinary song. This beak is an amazing device. Woodpeckers beat them on wood more than ten thousand times a day. The time of one hit reaches 50 milliseconds. In order not to get a concussion from such loads, in the skull of these species of birds there is a special system of shock absorbers. The tongue of some woodpeckers protrudes ten centimeters. Not a single larva will escape from such a flexible, sticky and jagged at the end of the probe. The tendon base of the tongue loops around the skull. Do not fold the entire long structure in half in the beak.

Bearded - Woodpecker detachment, Bearded family

Variegated beard (Megalaima rafflesii). Habitat - Asia. Length 25 cm. Weight 50 g

Sparrow-sized beards; maximum from a thrush. They got their name due to the thin feathers at the base of the beak. It gives the impression of a small beard.

Common wryneck (Jynx torquilla). Woodpecker squad, Woodpecker family. Habitats - Asia, Africa, Europe. Length 20 cm. Weight 35 g

The ancient Greeks believed that the wryneck is Yinx, the daughter of the god Pan, whom Zeus's wife Hera turned into a bird, because she contributed to the connection between her husband and Io, the daughter of the king of Argos.

Woodpecker

Woodpecker - Woodpecker detachment, Woodpecker family

Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major). Habitats - Asia, Africa, Europe. Length 25 cm. Weight up to 100 g

Nature has ideally adapted the woodpecker to an arboreal lifestyle. The bird has a very hard tail, on which it relies when climbing trees, the structure of the skull and beak make it possible to hollow wood in search of food, a long flexible tongue, forked at the end in the form of a kind of spear, serves to pull insects and their larvae out of a hollowed hole, and toes with sharp claws hold the woodpecker on a vertical trunk.

Order Woodpeckers / Picariae

Woodpeckers are birds of small and medium size: the smallest are smaller than a sparrow, the largest are the size of a crow. Appearance and coloration of woodpeckers are quite different. Some species have a monochromatic brownish coloration, others have a variegated, often quite bright plumage. The wings are blunt, usually consisting of 10-11 primary flight feathers. The tail often consists of 10-12 helmsmen. Sexual dimorphism is weakly expressed; chicks are colored similarly to adults. The legs of woodpeckers are usually four-fingered, short, but strong, well adapted to climbing the trunk and branches of trees: in most species, 2 fingers are turned forward, 2 back. The claws are hooked, which helps the bird to easily stay on the trees. All woodpeckers are diurnal, the vast majority are forest birds. They begin to breed at the age of about a year, forming pairs during the nesting period. Woodpeckers nest in hollows or burrows. The number of eggs in a clutch varies greatly. More often, the clutch consists of 2-12 single-colored white eggs, which are laid directly on the bottom of the nest; nest litter is usually absent. Both the male and the female (but more than the female) incubate the clutch for about 2 weeks. The chicks hatch blind and in the vast majority of species are naked (without downy attire). After leaving the nests, the chicks stay together for some time with the whole family, but soon the brood breaks up. Most woodpeckers are quarrelsome birds: they can be found in groups only in places rich in food. Woodpeckers lead a sedentary lifestyle, but in autumn many species wander, flying to places where they did not nest. They fly even farther from their nesting sites in winter. Almost all woodpeckers feed on insects, rarely eat plant foods. Many species, especially those found in the temperate zone, switch to feeding on tree seeds in winter. Some species consume exclusively plant foods. By exterminating insects, many of which damage trees and shrubs, woodpeckers bring certain benefits to forestry. In addition, most woodpecker-like nests are hollowed out, and other hollow-nesting birds subsequently willingly settle in them, the vast majority of which are insectivorous birds useful for forestry. Woodpeckers are distributed in all forests of the globe, with the exception of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Madagascar; especially a lot of them in South America. This order includes 380 species, united in 2 suborders: jacamars (Galbulae) and woodpeckers proper (Pici). Birds from the jacamar suborder are characterized by an elongated body, a long, almost awl-shaped beak with bristles at the base, short wings, a long stepped tail and soft fluffy plumage with a golden sheen, for which the jacamar is also called glitter tyanki. These birds are widespread in Central and South America. Jacamars are divided into 2 families: chatterboxes (Galbulidae) and powder puffs (Bucconidae). The suborder of the woodpeckers proper includes outwardly very different birds, characterized by a strong, usually massive beak and a dense, stocky body with a medium-sized tail. These birds are distributed in America, Africa, Europe and Asia, almost everywhere where tree and shrub vegetation is found. Actually woodpeckers are divided into 4 families.

white-billed woodpecker / Campephilus principalis

The white-billed woodpecker is found in the southeast of North America, where it inhabits vast expanses of swampy forests. The coloration of this woodpecker is strict. The main color of its plumage is dense black, from the back of the head on the sides of the neck there are two wide white stripes, connecting on the back, so the middle of the back is also white. The wing, with the exception of the shoulder feathers and the outer edge of the three outer primaries, is white. On the back of the head there is a large beautiful crest of elongated feathers - the male is bright red, the female is black. The eyes are bright yellow and shiny, the legs are lead-gray, the beak is light, ivory. For the color of the beak, this woodpecker got its name.The contours of the body of the white-billed woodpecker are also remarkable: its neck is thin, making the head seem disproportionately large.

white-billed woodpecker

P about the size, this is a very large woodpecker: the length of the bird exceeds 0.5 m. White-billed woodpeckers live in pairs, which probably do not break up all their lives. Both birds of a pair are always together, but even at a distance it is not difficult to distinguish them: the female is noisier, but more careful than the male. The breeding season starts in March. White-billed woodpeckers are very cautious and stay in the most secluded corners of the forest during the nesting period. The hollow is always arranged in the trunk of a living tree, usually in oak, always at a considerable height; often the inlet of the hollow is located under a large bough or branch that protects against water flowing into the hollow when it rains. Both the male and the female take part in hollowing out the hollow. The clutch consists of 5-7 pure white eggs placed directly on the bottom of the hollow. In the southern regions of the range, these birds breed chicks twice a season, in the north they have only one clutch. In its habits, the white-billed woodpecker is somewhat different from other woodpeckers. His flight is extremely beautiful and, like other woodpeckers, wavy. But, flying from one tree to another, the bird first climbs to the top of the tree on which it was, and, flying from it, does not flap its wings, but, opening them, plans down; she describes a smooth arc, admiring the beauty of her plumage to the most demanding artist. This woodpecker does not like to fly long distances and prefers to climb the trunk and branches of trees and jump from one closely standing tree to another. Climbing a tree, the white-billed woodpecker incessantly utters a sonorous, clear and pleasant cry “pet-pet-pet”. He repeats this three-syllable cry so often that one has to doubt whether the bird is silent for even a few minutes during the day. His voice can be heard from miles away. The woodpecker extracts its food by carefully examining the trunks and large branches of trees. Starting at the bottom of the tree and climbing in a spiraling line around the trunk, the bird inspects the cracks and crevices in the bark and pecks at them, looking for insects. The strength of this bird is very high: with one blow of its beak, it beats off pieces of bark and chips up to 17-20 cm in length, and when it finds a shrunken, insect-infested tree, it knocks the bark off 2-3 m2 of the trunk surface in a few hours and thus in 2-3 days completely sands the wood. The prey of white-billed woodpeckers most often become larvae, pupae and adults of beetles living in the bark and wood, as well as open-living insects living on the surface of trunks. At the end of summer and in autumn, these birds eat berries and fruits of wild trees. These beautiful birds are often destroyed by people for their extremely beautiful head with a bright tuft and ivory beak. Travelers, greedy for various "reminders", seek to acquire the head of a white-billed woodpecker as an exotic souvenir from those places where this bird forms an integral part of the landscape of terrible and at the same time wonderful swamps. At present, the white-billed woodpecker is a very rare bird: it has already disappeared from most of its range.

acorn woodpecker / Melanerpes formicivorus

The acorn woodpecker makes huge stocks. In autumn, he hollows out in the trunks and large branches of oaks, eucalyptus, pines, sycamores, and even in telegraph poles and walls of wooden houses, many thousands of small potholes - cells, into each of which he drives an acorn tightly. The size of such pantries is impressive: in the mountain forest of California, 20 thousand acorns were counted, driven by a woodpecker into the bark of a sycamore tree, and about 50 thousand acorns were found in the bark of another tree - pine trees! These woodpeckers are also remarkable in that they usually live in groups of 3-12 birds all year round. Each such group occupies a rather large territory, from which outsiders are expelled. All members of the group take part in the defense of this territory; all of them participate in the storage of acorns and collectively use their reserves.

acorn woodpecker

V In the spring, the group does not split into pairs; all females of the group lay their eggs in one common nest. All members of the group take part in the incubation of the clutch and in the feeding of the chicks. However, it is not uncommon (in some years and in some places) to meet pairs of birds leading a typically monogamous lifestyle, but in most cases this is a temporary phenomenon.

green woodpecker / Picus virdis

The green woodpecker is a very beautiful bird. The dorsal side and wings are yellowish-olive, the uppertail is brilliant yellow, the primary feathers are brown, the tail is brownish-black with grayish transverse stripes. The top of the head, the back of the head and the stripe running from the lower jaw to the neck are carmine red, the forehead, space around the eyes and cheeks are black. The ears, throat and goiter are whitish, the rest of the ventral side of the body is pale green with dark streaks. In terms of body shape, this woodpecker resembles a large motley woodpecker, but is larger than it: the length of a green woodpecker is 35-37 cm, weight is up to 250 g.The green woodpecker lives in deciduous and clarified mixed forests of Europe east to the Volga, in Western Asia (except for its northeastern regions) and in the Caucasus.

green woodpecker

O It lives best where open spaces alternate with forests and where there are many trees of different ages. These are very cautious birds - individual pairs settle far from each other, and therefore it is not easy to meet them. However, during the nesting period, birds give out their presence loud cries: the female and the male call alternately all day long. The hollows of the bird are hollowed out mainly in decaying trees: old aspens, sedge, willows. Clutch, which occurs in most of the range in May (which is quite late for woodpeckers), consists of 5-9 shiny white eggs. Both the male and the female take part in their incubation, as well as in feeding the chicks and hollowing out the hollow. The green woodpecker feeds on various insects, which it collects on tree trunks. His favorite food is ants, which he eats in huge quantities. To catch them, the woodpecker willingly descends to the ground and, in search of ant pupae - “ant eggs”, breaks deep passages inside the anthills.

earthen woodpecker / Gecolaptes olivaceus

The earthen woodpecker is a medium-sized bird for woodpeckers, whose body length is about 25 cm. It is painted very modestly: its plumage is predominantly olive-brown with yellowish-brown stems of the flight feathers and orange-brown tail feathers. The rump and ventral side of the body with an admixture of red, the head is gray. This woodpecker is widespread in South Africa, where it lives in treeless areas, inhabiting outcrops of mountain slopes and high river banks or slopes of ravines. In terms of lifestyle, this original woodpecker is an amazing example of adaptation to the conditions of an area unusual for woodpeckers.As a rule, the observer sees the bird sitting on some large boulder or flying low above the ground from one rocky outcrop to another.

earthen woodpecker

L you can occasionally see the earthen woodpecker in a dense bush. On the ground, he moves by jumping. This is why it is called an earthen woodpecker because it does not hammer trees, but breaks through its passages in steep river banks, on hill slopes and along the slopes of ravines, as well as in the walls of earthen buildings, both in search of food and for the construction of a dwelling in which it displays chicks. This dwelling is a hole about a meter long, at the end of which narrow vaults are distributed to the sides and up, forming a small cave. The bottom of the bird cave is usually lined with shreds of animal hair. Here, during the breeding season, birds lay 3-5 pure white eggs. For most of their lives, these woodpeckers dig in the ground in search of food, they also look for food on the ground, on the rocky walls of abandoned buildings and on the sheer walls of rocks. Their food consists of insects and their larvae, as well as worms, spiders and some other invertebrates.

Golden Woodpecker / Colaptes auratus

The golden woodpecker is a small bird with a body length of about 27 cm. The color of this woodpecker is quite bright and beautiful. The dorsal side of the body is clay-brown with black transverse streaks and white uppertail, the ventral side is white with black spots. The head is gray, surrounded by a red stripe, on the goiter there is a black stripe of a crescent shape. The trunks of the flight and tail feathers, as well as the underside of the wings, are golden yellow. During the flight, the woodpecker often flaps its wings. Each time he waves them, his golden feathers flash brightly against the blue sky. The golden woodpecker is widespread in North America, where it inhabits open plains. Nests are arranged in hollows. Its meat is highly valued by many hunters and is often served at the table.

golden woodpecker

red-headed woodpecker/ Melanerpes erythrocephalus

The red-headed woodpecker is a small bird for woodpeckers: its body length is about 23 cm. Its body is dense, its head is large, its neck is short, and its tail is rounded. This woodpecker has a bright red head and neck, while the back, wings and tail are black, and the ventral side is white. The red-headed woodpecker is one of the most common birds North America. Here, these woodpeckers keep in sparse forests, often flying out to feed on the edges and flying in, especially in the summer-autumn period, in settlements. In the spring, starting to breed, birds very rarely hollow out a new hollow; usually they find and clear, and sometimes deepen the old.This hollow is always placed in a shriveled tree with rotting wood.

red-headed woodpecker

H Often on such a tree several hollows are hollowed out, but only one is occupied. In healthy green trees, these woodpeckers cannot hollow out hollows for themselves. The disposition of the red-headed woodpecker is very cheerful and mischievous. Sitting somewhere on a fence post near a field or road and seeing a passing person, the woodpecker slowly moves to the opposite side of the post from the person, from behind which he looks out from time to time, as if trying to guess the intentions of the approaching one. If a person passes by, then the woodpecker, deftly jumping to the top of the column, begins to drum on it with his beak, as if rejoicing that he managed to remain unnoticed by the person. If a person approaches him, then the woodpecker flies to the next post, then to the next one and starts drumming on it, as if teasing the person and inviting him to play hide and seek. Often these restless birds also appear near houses: they climb on them, knock on the roofs with their beaks. They cause a lot of trouble when bread and berries and fruits ripen in the gardens. These birds, arriving in large flocks, eat berries and fruits in huge quantities, completely devastating entire gardens. Extremely curious red-headed woodpeckers deal with apples. The bird sticks its beak into the apple with all its might and, clinging to the branch with its paws, plucks the fruit planted on its beak, and then clumsily flies with this burden to the nearest fence. Sitting on a post, the woodpecker breaks the apple into pieces and eats it. Birds produce even greater devastation in grain fields, not only eating ripened grains, but also breaking stems and trampling ears into the ground. Finally, these birds are also capable of predatory: they look for nests of small birds, and often artificial nests, and drink the eggs found in them. At times they even attack dovecotes. Having satisfied their hunger, red-headed woodpeckers gather in small flocks and, sitting on the branches of a dried tree, begin a kind of hunting for flying insects from here. Birds rush at them from a distance of 4-6 m, make very deft turns in the air, grab insects and, uttering joyful cries, return to former place. Watching this competition from the outside is extremely pleasant: making complex pirouettes and turns, the birds demonstrate all the beauty of their bright plumage. Red-headed woodpeckers feed on seeds and grains of various plants, fruits, berries and insects. Due to the damage that red-headed woodpeckers cause to fields and gardens, local residents ruthlessly exterminate them in huge numbers.

Copper Woodpecker / Colaptes mexicanus

The area in which the copper woodpecker lives is a dry desert overgrown with pale green undersized agaves. Here and there among the different types of artichokes that make their way through the white sand, large yuccas grow alone. E that area, lifeless for most of the year, makes a depressing impression on anyone traveling through it. And the more unexpected and joyful for the traveler is the meeting with flocks of copper woodpeckers. Looking closely at the flocks of these birds, you can see that the woodpeckers all the time fly up to the dried flower-bearing stems of the agaves, peck them for a while, then fly to the trunk of the yucca, which is also pecked, after which they again fly to the agave, etc. They peck out this from dried flower-bearing stems of agave acorns, which at one time were placed there by them. An interesting custom of the copper woodpecker is to make pantries in the dried stalks of agaves, where he hides acorns. To do this, the woodpecker punches a small rounded hole in the lower part of the dried agave stem, reaching the cavity inside the stem, and pushes the acorns into it until it fills that part of the cavity that is below the hole. Then, a little higher than the first, he punches a second hole, through which he fills with acorns a part of the cavity located between these holes, etc. The cavity inside the stem is narrow, and the woodpecker usually has to expend considerable effort pushing the acorns down. Sometimes, therefore, only one acorn is laid in each hole, but in this case there are a lot of holes in the agave stem, behind each of them there is an acorn. Splitting the stem lengthwise, you can see that it is filled with a whole column of acorns. The copper woodpecker spends a lot of time and effort on storing acorns for future use, but, perhaps, he has to use no less labor to collect acorns: in the desert area where agaves grow, there are no oaks, and therefore woodpeckers have to fly for acorns for many kilometers to the slopes nearby mountains. However, as compensation for such hard work, copper woodpeckers can live in hot weather in this sun-scorched desert, eating exclusively acorns stored for this occasion. The way they are eaten is also amazing. Taking out an acorn, the woodpecker clamps it into a hole specially hollowed out for this purpose in the bark of a dry yucca trunk. The woodpecker easily breaks the acorn shell with its beak blows, and eats the nucleolus. Thus, during the dry season, these birds gather in places overgrown with agaves, where their warehouses are located, and when it rains, they scatter through the valleys, where they feed on insects, a significant part of which are ants pecked on the ground.

sharp-winged woodpecker / Jungipicus kizuki

The sharp-winged woodpecker is a small, sparrow-sized bird: it weighs only 19-25 g. Its color is variegated. Back, loin and wings in alternating black and white transverse stripes. The head from above and from the sides, as well as the back of the neck are brownish-gray. The sides of the neck are white, delimited from below by black stripes. A white stripe runs from the beak through the eye to the white spot on the neck. The goiter and throat are white below, the rest of the ventral side of the body is brownish with frequent dark longitudinal streaks. The middle pairs of tail feathers are black, the rest are striped in black and white. The male differs from the female in the presence of a few red feathers on the sides of the back of the head.

sharp-winged woodpecker

X a characteristic feature of this bird (as well as the whole genus of sharp-winged woodpeckers) is the presence of wings that are sharper than those of other woodpeckers. The sharp-winged woodpecker is distributed in the northeastern provinces of China, on the Korean Peninsula, on the Japanese and southern Kuril Islands, on Sakhalin and in the Ussuri Territory. It is found in a variety of forest stands from impenetrable thickets of hot valleys to subalpine forests. During nesting time, birds prefer to stay in plantations of soft tree species (velvet, linden, poplar, etc.), where it is easier for them to hollow out or find a hollow for themselves. Usually these woodpeckers nest in hollows of horizontal boughs or tree branches. Masonry happens in May. Outside the breeding season, sharp-winged woodpeckers are usually found in flocks of tits, with which they carefully examine the branches, leaves and needles of trees and shrubs in search of insects. During the gathering of food, this woodpecker can often be found climbing the stems of thick herbaceous plants, where the bird sometimes hollows out the stems, extracting insects and their larvae living in the tissues of plants, pecking out seeds that have not yet crumbled.

pampas woodpecker / Colaptes agricola

The pampas woodpecker is a beautiful, brightly colored bird. Her body is black, the sides of the head, as well as the sides and front of the neck are golden yellow, the throat is white. The stems of the flight feathers are golden yellow, the tail feathers are black, and the lining of the wings is golden ocher. The male and female differ in the color of their whiskers, which are red in the male and black in the female. pampas woodpecker - large bird with comparatively long legs and a less stiff tail than other woodpeckers. A soft tail is a poor support when climbing a vertical surface, and therefore this woodpecker usually sits on branches horizontally, across the branch, and climbs along the trunk only occasionally.This peculiar bird is widespread in the pampas of South America.

pampas woodpecker

During the breeding season, the male and female dig a hole in a steep bank of a river or in a steep slope, where the female lays her eggs. Sometimes, when there are no such slopes and cliffs in which birds can dig a hole, some free-standing tree with very soft wood is selected, where woodpeckers hollow out a hollow for themselves. These birds feed by walking on the ground and pecking at the invertebrates encountered. Sometimes they collect openly living insects on rare trees and bushes in the pampas. Occasionally, using their legs and beak, they dig worms and insect larvae out of the ground.

Great spotted woodpecker / Dendrocopos major

The great spotted woodpecker is a beautiful, indeed very colorful bird. Its predominant color consists of a combination of black and white tones. The top of the head and neck, the dorsal side and undertail are blue-black, the shoulders, cheeks, sides of the neck are white, the belly is off-white, the undertail is light red. The flight feathers are black with white spots forming white transverse stripes on the black background of the folded wing. The tail is black, except for the two outer tail feathers, which are white. The eyes are brownish-red, the beak is lead-black, the legs are dark brown. The male differs from the female by a red spot on the crown. Young birds are similar in color to adults, but they have a red spot on their forehead. The tail of a large spotted woodpecker is of medium length, pointed and very hard, since it serves mainly as a support when the bird climbs a tree trunk.

Great spotted woodpecker

H How important this supporting role of the tail is can be judged by the fact that during the period before the next molt, the tail feathers, being erased, are shortened by 10 mm or more! But the total length of the tail is 100 mm. The Great Spotted Woodpecker is a medium-sized bird: its body length is 23-26 cm, its weight is about 100 g. This woodpecker lives in the forests of North Africa (northern Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), in Europe and on adjacent islands, in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor, in Siberia (except for the northern regions of the taiga) and Primorye, as well as in Kamchatka, Sakhalin, the Japanese and Kuril Islands and on the Korean Peninsula. The woodpecker leads a sedentary lifestyle, but in cold weather it migrates. In the spring (February, March, April), woodpeckers become especially noisy and agile. Males often make a "trill". Sitting on the trunk, the male quickly strikes the dry knot with his beak, and the bough vibrating under these blows emits a kind of trill - “drum roll”, something like “tra-ta-ta ...”. This trill replaces the song of the great spotted woodpecker. You can hear it far away even in the dense forest. A female flies to this “song”, and a pair is formed. The formed pair zealously defends its nesting site, driving out all other woodpeckers from it. Somewhere in the middle of this area, the birds make their nest. For its device, a tree with soft or decaying wood is selected. The most commonly used is aspen, less often alder, even more rarely birch, oak and other species with hard wood. Usually on the trunk, at a height of 2-8 m from the ground - often under the cap of a tinder fungus, woodpeckers hollow out a hollow for themselves. Alternately changing, the male and female tirelessly hammer on the tree, splitting off pieces of wood 2-4 cm long, which are immediately thrown down. On last year's dried grass, and if the spring is late, on the snow near the tree trunk, you can see fresh light chips, through which you can easily find a freshly hollowed out hollow. The hollow has a depth of 28-35 cm, the inlet - notch has a diameter of 5-5.6 cm. At the end of April - in May, eggs are laid. The clutch usually consists of 5-7 shiny white eggs. Eggs are laid directly on the bottom of the hollow; often heavily crushed pieces of wood serve as litter. The eggs are incubated by both the male and the female alternately for 12-13 days. Chicks hatch blind and completely helpless, but with a well-developed calcaneal callus. The first days of life they sit quietly, the grown chicks scream loudly, demanding food. By this call, heard for 80-100 m, you can easily find their nest. Both adult birds take part in feeding the chicks. The chicks are very voracious, and the parents arrive at the nest with food every 2-4 minutes. The female usually feeds the chicks more often than the male. During the day, both adult birds bring food to the nest up to 300 times. Naturally, it is possible to collect a huge number of insects necessary for feeding chicks only from a large area of \u200b\u200bthe forest. It is not surprising, therefore, that the hunting area of a pair of woodpeckers occupies about 15 hectares. The chicks spend three weeks in the nest. The first 25-30 days after leaving the nest, the entire brood keeps together, and old birds first feed young, already well-flying birds. After some time, the young move to an independent life and begin to roam widely. Woodpeckers fly well and quickly, describing a smooth arc in the air: flapping its wings several times, the bird rises to the top of the arc, then folds its wings and swiftly, like a thrown spear, flies forward, quickly losing height, then flaps its wings again, etc. However, in all cases, they prefer to climb the trunk of a tree, using their wings only to fly to a neighboring tree. Even when the bird is in danger, it is in no hurry to fly away. Noticing, for example, the approach of a person, the woodpecker, as if unintentionally, without betraying the fact that he noticed the danger, crawls, continuing to look for something in the bumps of the bark, to the opposite side of the trunk and, climbing up the trunk, only occasionally looks out from behind it. as if casually watching a person. If you try to go around the tree, the bird will again move so that there is a trunk between it and the person. If a person tries to approach the bird, it will fly to a nearby tree, expressing its displeasure with a loud, sharp cry. The woodpecker's voice is carried far through the forest and resembles something like a jerky "boom", repeated either separately or several times in a row, when the bird is worried. Woodpeckers spend most of their time looking for food. In summer and early autumn, woodpeckers can easily be observed on a tree trunk. Usually, the bird sits on the trunk at the base of the tree and begins to jump up, making spiral turns around the trunk. Climbing up, she carefully examines every crack, every bump in the bark. If a bird notices something on thick branches, then it examines them as well, usually from below, hanging from the branch and again leaning on its tail. Having thus examined the trunk and large side branches to a height of 12-16 m, and sometimes even higher, the woodpecker flies to another tree. If, while examining a tree, a woodpecker finds insects living under the bark, he uses his beak: a measured and loud “knock-knock-knock” spreads far through the forest. With strong blows, the woodpecker breaks the bark or makes a funnel in it, exposing the passages of root insects, and sticky long tongue , which easily penetrates these passages, the bird extracts larvae and adult insects from under the bark. In autumn, the woodpecker's way of obtaining food and its composition change. A bird plucks a cone from a coniferous tree, clamps it into a natural niche or a niche hollowed out by itself at the top of a shrunken tree trunk and strikes it with force with its beak. With blows of its beak, the woodpecker opens the scales of the cone, extracts and eats the seeds. Usually, a mountain of cones accumulates under such a woodpecker forge by the end of winter: 5000-7000 broken cones were found under separate forges. Every day, the woodpecker breaks up to 100 cones, and therefore, in order to provide itself with food in winter, each bird seizes an individual plot in the fall, the area of \u200b\u200bwhich, depending on the yield of coniferous seeds and the number of coniferous trees on the site, ranges from 5 to 15 hectares. On each of these sites there are several dozen forges. Birds protect their individual areas and do not allow other woodpeckers to enter them. In early spring, woodpeckers, along with seeds, again begin to eat insects that have emerged after wintering. And at the beginning of sap flow at birch woodpeckers, the woodpecker often makes horizontal rows of holes in the bark with its beak on the trunks and on the branches of trees, and when the juice appears, it alternately applies its beak to each hole and drinks. Thus, in the diet of woodpeckers, there is a clearly pronounced seasonal change in food. In autumn and winter, woodpeckers feed on the seeds of coniferous trees, in spring and summer - animal food. The large spotted woodpecker eats ants in significant numbers: 300-500 insects were found in the stomachs of some dead birds. Quite often, woodpeckers eat various beetles, especially those living under the bark, bark beetles and barbels, as well as weevils, leaf beetles, etc. The large spotted woodpecker is a useful bird. By hollowing out hollows, which are not usually reused by the woodpeckers themselves, they thereby create a housing stock for many other very useful hollow-nesters (for example, tits and flycatchers), arranging nests in ready-made hollows. In addition, woodpeckers are able to extract and destroy such pests that are dangerous for the forest, such as xylophagous insects (bark beetles, barbels, etc.), which have no enemies among birds other than woodpeckers. The woodpecker hammers only trees infected with pests, and therefore the traces of this activity are signals indicating that the tree is affected and needs to be cut down. Eating the seeds of coniferous trees in winter, the great spotted woodpecker does not interfere with the self-renewal of these species, since during the winter it eats only a few percent of the seed crop.

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker / Dendrocopos minor

The small spotted woodpecker is one of the smallest woodpeckers: it is only slightly larger than a sparrow in size. In plumage coloration, it is very similar to the great spotted woodpecker. With all its habits, it also resembles its larger relative, but, unlike the latter, the small spotted woodpecker is more common on lateral branches and thin branches of trees than on trunks. It is more mobile and does not linger on the same tree for more than one minute when searching for food.In winter, it often hammers the thin tops of young fir trees or picks out something in thin branches. It cannot crush cones with its weak beak. Its food consists exclusively of various root beetles - barbels, bark beetles and carpenter ants.

Small spotted woodpecker

In nesting time, he keeps very secretive, but at other times quite noisy. The voice of this bird sounds like a frequently repeated mournful "ki-ki-ki-ki-ki ...". Its small, neatly made low above the ground in drying and decaying trunks of aspen or alder hollows are most willingly engaged in small insectivorous hollow-nesting birds. The small spotted woodpecker lives in deciduous and mixed forests in the north of Algeria, in Europe and on the adjacent islands, in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor and in the west of Iran, in Siberia (with the exception of the north of the taiga), reaching east to North Korea, Primorye, Sakhalin and Kamchatka.

Red woodpecker/ Micropternus brachyurus

The red woodpecker got its name because the main color of its plumage is reddish-brown. Wings and tail with black transverse stripes. The beak is dark brown, the legs are greyish brown. The eyes are brownish red. Coloring different birds highly variable: some individuals are red or rusty red, while others are brown and dark chestnut. The thumb of this woodpecker is underdeveloped, and therefore its paws seem to be three-toed. This is a medium-sized woodpecker: the body length of the bird is about 25 cm. All plumage of red woodpeckers (especially the head, chest and tail) is smeared with some kind of sticky substance. This substance is nothing but the juices of ants crushed by woodpeckers.

red woodpecker

These insects, found in masses on trees where woodpeckers climb, are very aggressive, they cling to the plumage of a bird and try to bite. The woodpecker, on the other hand, crushes the ants by rubbing its hard plumage (especially the tail) against the unevenness of the bark; the ants are crushed, and their juices are smeared over the body of the bird. Therefore, the body of woodpeckers has a peculiar specific smell of formic acid. The constant neighborhood with ants, which crawl en masse along the branches and trunks of trees, where birds collect their food, leads to another interesting feature. The tail of these birds is almost always adorned with more or less heads of large red (or fire, as they are also called) ants. These ants, having grabbed something, no longer let their prey out of their jaws, and even if you tear off the head of this insect, it will still hold on to what it grabbed. When woodpeckers climb the trunks of mango trees, ants grab them by the tail feathers, die from the friction of the bird's tail against the roughness of the bark, but their heads still remain on the beards of the feathers. This woodpecker lives along the eastern slopes of the Himalayas, in Hindustan, Ceylon, Indochina and the southern provinces of China, inhabiting the valleys of lowland rivers and mountains up to an altitude of 2000 m above sea level. Here the red woodpecker keeps to the edges of the forest; often it can be found in tea gardens, in cultivated fields with rare bamboo trees, in banana plantations; however, it often settles in sparse areas of the forest, avoiding the impenetrable jungle. The breeding season for this woodpecker lasts from February to June. The nests of these birds are wonderful - woodpeckers do not build them themselves, they nest in anthills! Large tree ants of the genus Crematogaster, fire ants of the jungle, live in Indochina. These ants arrange their nests in the crowns of trees at a height of 2 to 20 m from the ground. Outside, the ant nest is a mass of gray-brown color, most of all resembling felt, cardboard or papier-mâché, but usually characterized by great strength and hardness. In the wall of this structure, the red woodpecker makes a rounded hole about 5 cm in diameter. This hole leads to an internal cavity in which the female lays her eggs. For the construction of this “nest in a nest”, woodpeckers, oddly enough, always choose the largest and always populated anthills! And it is completely incomprehensible why large, terrible for all living ants do not touch either eggs, or chicks, or the incubating female herself! But the incubating female feeds on ant pupae, which she easily pecks without rising from the eggs. The clutch of this woodpecker usually consists of 3 eggs. They are white in color, and their shell is thin and transparent. However, after some time from contact with formic acid secreted by insects, the shell darkens and the eggs become brownish. Red woodpeckers feed on various types of ants, which they collect in mass on the trunks and branches of trees, as well as on the ground, where they often descend in search of food. But most often and in large numbers they eat ants of the genus Crematogaster. In early spring, these woodpeckers often visit banana plantations. Here, on the trunks of banana palms, birds make holes with their beaks and drink sweet juice.

Three-toed Woodpecker / Picoides tridactylus

The three-toed woodpecker is a beautiful, colorful bird. Her back is white with wide black streaks, her uppertail is brownish black, her tail is black with transverse white stripes along the edges of its top. The wings are brownish-black with white streaks. The forehead, nape and back of the neck are black with white streaks on the forehead and nape, the sides of the head and neck are white. From the eye back, going down the side of the neck, there is a wide black stripe; the same black stripe goes from the base of the lower jaw along the sides of the throat and goiter and breaks up on the sides of the chest into large longitudinal black spots.The male's crown is yellow, the female's is gray. characteristic feature of these birds is the absence of their first toe - they are three-toed: two fingers are turned forward and one back.

three-toed woodpecker

This is a medium-sized woodpecker: the wing length is 12-13 cm. Three-toed woodpeckers are common in Central and Eastern Europe(except the southern regions), in Siberia (reaching north to the Arctic Circle, and east to North Korea, Primorye, Sakhalin and Kamchatka), as well as in most of North America (absent only in the far north and southeast of the United States) . They inhabit vast and dense forests of the northern type (mainly coniferous), and in the south they keep in mountain forests. This woodpecker starts breeding early: even at the northern borders of its distribution, already in February, the drum roll of a male recklessly tapping his beak on a dry branch is often heard. Males continue to drum throughout the spring - until the end of May. During this period, three-toed woodpeckers are very lively, they chirp and often cry out. Hollows are arranged most often in larches, often in spruces. Usually the male and female gouge out a hollow in rotting, dried up or scorched trees and even in stumps, but often in intact trees. More often, such a hollow is located low from the ground: at a height of 1-6 m, where 3-6 white eggs are laid. In June, still poorly flying young birds can be found in most of the range. After leaving the nest, the whole family first roams together in the forest, then the brood breaks up. In winter, migrations reach a large scale, and at this time most birds move far to the south of their nesting sites. This woodpecker feeds on wood insects, and in autumn also seeds and berries. The three-toed woodpecker obtains its food almost exclusively with the help of chiseling, and catches open-living insects only during the feeding of chicks. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the stomachs of these birds, larvae, pupae, and adult beetles are always found in large numbers living under the bark of trees, primarily larvae of bark beetles and barbels, as well as larvae of borers, weevils, horntails, etc. This bird is very voracious: for an incomplete winter day, one three-toed woodpecker can tear off the bark from a large spruce infected with bark beetles with blows of its beak. And according to rough estimates, it is known that there are about 10,000 bark beetle larvae on such a spruce! Even if the woodpecker does not find and eat all the bark beetles, they will die from winter frosts, falling on the snow with broken bark. The three-toed woodpecker is one of the most useful birds of the coniferous forest.

Far in the spring forest, the sound of “trrrr” is heard, similar to a knock on an empty barrel. This is a woodpecker, a forest worker, from morning to evening does not stop his work. Today we will tell you what a woodpecker bird is very important for the forest. The description and photos will help you learn all the most interesting things about the life of a feathered orderly in the forest.

What does a woodpecker look like

In nature, there are about 20 species of woodpeckers. They live in the forest zone of North America, northern Africa and Eurasia. They are small and medium in size, the structure of all is approximately the same. The most common and well-known species is the great spotted woodpecker. The bird is quite large. The body is up to 27 cm long, and the wingspan is up to 50. The weight is small, about 100 g.

It got its name because of the variegated color of the feathers. Brown-white, white, gray, black with a blue or greenish tint are the primary colors. There are all shades of brown on the body. The woodpecker's elegance is given by bright red or pink spots on the back of the male's head and, like a cap, crowning the crown.

Listen to the voice of the woodpecker

The same red spots are in the undertail. In general, in different species of woodpeckers, the arrangement of stripes and spots of black and white forms a kind of rhythmic pattern.

Why is the woodpecker called the forest doctor?

Woodpeckers live where there are trees: both in the northern taiga and in city parks. Types of trees do not matter, it can live in coniferous, deciduous and mixed forests.

The bird is sedentary, lives in the same place for a long time. They migrate to another place only in case of crop failure, and do not return to their native places. In this regard, there may be very few woodpeckers, and it will take a long time until the number is restored.

What does woodpecker eat

The woodpecker is an omnivore. In the warm season, their main food is a variety of insects. In large quantities, woodpeckers eat harmful insects that spoil wood, their larvae, any caterpillars, ants, occasionally eat snails, crustaceans.

There are cases when woodpeckers ate small chicks, bird eggs not only in birds of other species, but even in other woodpeckers. On occasion, they can eat carrion and find food in garbage dumps, picking up food waste.

With its cone-shaped sharp beak, the woodpecker hourly hollows out the bark of a tree. To a depth of up to 10 cm, he hollows out a funnel and takes out an insect with a sticky tongue. The tongue is long, up to 4 cm.

It is noteworthy that he does this only on dried or diseased trees, without touching healthy ones. That is why he is called the "forest doctor". This woodpecker really brings great benefits to the forest.

In winter, the main food is the seeds of trees, more often conifers.

An interesting way of extracting a seed from a cone. Having picked a cone, the woodpecker carries it in its beak to a tree, where there is a gap or a narrow fork between the branches. It clamps the bump, hits it strongly with its beak - plucked scales fly in all directions. He will eat all the seeds, throw a cone, flies after the next one, returns to the same place again. These places are called the “forge” or “anvil”, one woodpecker can have up to 57 of them. And under such a tree there is a mountain of empty cones in hundreds and even thousands of pieces.

In addition to the seeds of coniferous trees, these birds also feed on other seeds and nuts, buds, and young shoots. In the spring they hollow out the bark and drink sweet birch or maple sap.

Woodpeckers are loud and noisy birds. They jealously guard their feeding territory. A stranger will appear, the “owner” sits opposite, his beak opens, feathers on his head spread out - it scares. If the uninvited guest is not afraid, he starts screaming, drumming on the tree and chasing the stranger along the trunk. Can fly from above and peck painfully.

Woodpecker breeding

In the mating season, the male and female begin to hammer the nest. They will find an old aspen and work for 2 weeks, make a recess. Sawdust is picked up, and they line the hollow from the inside. By the beginning of May, the female lays up to 8 eggs. Newly hatched chicks do not have plumage, they do not see or hear.

Chicks are just as loud as their parents. If they are full, they hum quite a bit. Hungry - gnashing. If you approach a tree and knock on the trunk with a stick, the chicks will squeal loudly.

Woodpeckers are birds of the woodpecker family, uniting 220 species. Body sizes in representatives of the family range from 8 cm and 7 g (golden-fronted woodpecker) to 60 cm and 600 g (large Muler woodpecker). The most famous and widespread species, the great motley woodpecker, has a body weighing about 100 g and up to 27 cm long. Woodpeckers live in forest areas, adapting to any biotype that has trees - from the taiga to city parks.

They are distributed almost everywhere, with the exception of the subpolar regions, Australia, and some oceanic islands. Woodpeckers are sedentary birds; they migrate to other places only in case of lack of food and then do not return to their native lands. In a particularly hungry time, birds can move closer to the places of human settlement.

Photo. Woodpecker cuts - chips fly.

The woodpecker is often called the orderly of the forest or the forest doctor, who provides invaluable services to forest plantations. In summer and spring, birds eat a huge number of insects, their larvae, which are taken out from under the bark, thereby saving the trees from damage and death. Woodpeckers even hollow out hollows in diseased or dead trees, without touching the living and healthy ones.

The structure of the bird's body is well adapted to such a way of eating. Woodpeckers have a large and strong skull, a cone-shaped, straight and long beak, a wedge-shaped tail, which they rely on the trunk when getting food. Birds get insects with a long sticky tongue protruding from the beak by 10 cm, in some species - by 20 cm. Birds can knock with their beak at a speed of 10 times per second.

Photo. Woodpeckers lumberfish.

In winter and autumn, woodpeckers feed on acorns, nuts, and seeds of coniferous trees. To do this, birds refer the plucked cone to a natural or hollowed-out gap in the fork of the trunk or between branches. With its beak, the woodpecker hits the cone, pinching off the scales and extracting the seeds. In spring, birds drink birch sap by making a small hole in the bark of trees.

The measured knock of a woodpecker heard among the trees is a good sign. This means that the forest doctor is doing his responsible job of preserving green spaces.

Photo. Woodpecker.

Photo. The woodpecker feeds its chicks.

White-backed woodpecker at work - video.

Another video. Only now the black woodpecker is at work!

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