Time for great ex-peck-tations

Blackbirds are no longer singing late into the night and the banshee screams of swifts are a fading memory.

Goldfinches are forming flocks before setting off to charm the countryside and urban areas await the arrival of autumn robins to claim territories with their twinkling songs.

Far from being devoid of bird sounds, however, suburbia is echoing with the strident calls of great spotted woodpeckers.

Late summer is a good time to see adult woodpeckers escorting offspring into gardens to teach them the skills they need to survive the winter.

Under watchful eyes, youngsters, with their dazzling scarlet caps and pied plumage, are taught to forage from bird feeders. Learning how to first locate and then master the art of dangling on peanut holders will be essential if they are to survive when natural food supplies dwindle.

However there is a grislier behaviour on display from these striking birds – the art of nest-robbing.

Dagger-shaped bills, designed for chiselling rotting wood for grubs, are also perfect tools for pile-driving into nest boxes and tree cavities to steal the baby birds of other species. A few series ago, BBC’s Springwatch chronicled the systematic plundering of a treecreeper’s family of nestlings by woodpeckers desperate to feed their own brood. The move from traditional woodlands into residential areas has been the driving force in a remarkable population boom for great spotted woodpeckers.

Numbers have grown by 350% over the last 50 years with up to 145,000 pairs nesting across the UK.

These figures contrast dramatically with the fortunes of its diminutive relative, the lesser spotted woodpecker.

Lesser spotted by name and by nature. It’s been more than a decade since I last saw one of these sparrow-size creatures shinning up an ash tree. The species was recently put on the Red List with fears numbers have crashed to as few as 800 breeding pairs.

However, a new scientific paper published in the journal, British Birds, gives hope for this elusive bird with a newly revised population estimate of 2,000 pairs.

Mastering the art of dangling on peanut holders will be essential