Great Spotted Woodpecker Holes in Shed

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.