Great spotted woodpecker Dendrocopos major

Features

This is Slovenia’s most common species of woodpeckers, which play an important role in the forest ecosystem as natural ’purifiers’ of insect larvae and tree cavity builders, as a unique adaptation in the world of birds.

Species	Bird
Living space	Conifer forest, Deciduous forest
Size	23 - 26 cm
Weight	75 g

Description

The great spotted woodpecker has a black back, a distinctly white oval stripe on the wings and red undertail feathers. Its head is black and white, and the males differ from the females by the red stripe on the crown. Its most common and most easily recognisable call is a loud ‘tchick’ sound, often in sequences. It feeds on beetles and their larvae, which it finds and pulls out of a tree trunk by chiselling with a sharp bill that ends with a strong and pointed tip. It also eats hazelnuts, walnuts, seeds from cones and fruit, and in winter it will visit bird-feeders. The great spotted woodpecker's call is a sharp kik. It drums on dead trees and branches to maintain contact between paired adults and to advertise ownership of territory. In Slovenia, the great spotted woodpecker loves natural and old forests with many rotten trunks, full of insect larvae, because it easily chisels wood there. The great spotted woodpecker is also found in parks and orchards.