Ruud Streefkerk

The great spotted Woodpecker is a fairly large bird, with a length of about 25 cm and a weight of of about 100 grams. His back is black with large oval, white shoulder patches, the flight feathers are barred with black and white, and the underparts are colored white and crimson. The bill is slate black and the legs are grey. The male has a crimson spot on the nape, which is absent in females. The food consists of insects and grubs, especially the larvae of beetles living under the bark of pine trees, but also of fruit, nuts, berries and seeds of coniferous trees. It often chops a hole in a tree in order to clamp a pine-cone in it, a so called ‘woodpeckers forge’. Nowadays the great spotted woodpecker has a special enemy: Ring-necked parakeets, originally from India, but as an escaped cage bird recently gaining more and more territory in Netherlands, who chase the woodpeckers from their nesting holes. Nevertheless, there is no evidence yet that the parakeet has a negative impact on the population of the woodpeckers. On the contrary they proliferated over the last years.