Surprise visitors next door
MY neighbours have a secret plan to get exotic birds in their garden – recently we have looked over the wall and seen some goldfinches and a woodpecker.
I’m not being funny about my sparrows, blue tits and starlings but I would be knocked out if a great spotted woodpecker parked on our feeder for a few seconds.
No, they only go next door, not even stopping to sit on our wall. Still, our wild and wonderful garden has a lot more bees than their place, and they don’t have a dog which charges outside whenever he sees starlings chattering on the shed!
The strange thing about the woodpecker is that we are not exactly next door to woodland. The nearest wooded area is half a mile away.
Anyone living near to wooded areas will not be surprised to see great spotted and green woodpeckers on their feeders looking for food to supplement their diets.
I think that, like a lot of wildlife, woodpeckers tend to be a little smaller than we expect. The great spotted woodpecker is about the same size as a blackbird. It is black and white with white shoulder patches and red underneath its tail. Males have a red patch on the back of their heads.
These are our most common woodpeckers and you are more likely to hear them than see them around spring, when they are drumming away at trees – performing their breeding displays.
Great spotted woodpeckers have all the ideal tools to do their job – a pointy bill to search for insects and a sticky tongue to snare them. However, they will eat berries and nuts.
If you are really lucky, you will get a much smaller woodpecker on your feeders, this is the lesser spotted woodpecker. Males are black and white with a red cap, females are plain black and white. They don’t have red under their tails but they have a lovely white ladder marking down their black back. This is a rare bird which birders fear only nests in one or two places in the region.
So if you have a woodpecker popping into your garden, appreciate it and think of little old, deprived me with a garden that they avoid.
To become a member of The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside, visit www.lancswt.org.uk or call 01772 324129. For more information about Cheshire Wildlife Trust, call 01948 820728 or go to their website at cheshirewildlifetrust.org. uk.