This great action shot of Syrian Woodpeckers Dendrocopos syriacus (female in the air, male on the ground) was taken in Bulgaria by Mladen Vasilev. See more of his woodpecker and other wildlife photos here.
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Black Woodpecker Dryocopus martius at its nest hole. Note the all red crown denoting a male bird. Photo taken in Hungary by Laszlo Becsy.
I am very pleased to announce that I have recently sent a manuscript on Black Woodpecker to my publisher. This monograph will be published within 12 months. It is the result of 20 years of work... observing pairs of this magnificent woodpecker and scouring the existing literature... and 2 years of writing. Here is a sneak preview of a draft sketch of one of Szabolcs Kokay's black and white illustrations which will be included in the book. There will also be 2 colour plates about 20 colour photographs.
One of the main areas of conflict between woodpeckers and people concerns the damage that they can do to wooden buildings. In some regions, they regularly bore holes in log cabins, barns and even occupied homes. People who, though being “bird-lovers”, sometimes ask for certain “crazy” individuals that continually hack holes in their summer houses to be culled. The precise reason why some birds do this is unclear, but presumably they are searching for prey that reside in the timber walls; it has even been suggested that high-frequency electrical sounds in the building fool the birds into thinking that invertebrates are present. This photo shows the work of a Great Spotted Woodpecker D. major on on a shed near Pasohlavky, Czech Republic, in April 2010.
