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Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

Dryobates minor

Identify the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is the smallest European woodpecker, a sparrow-sized black-and-white bird of the Palearctic. Often overlooked as it forages high in the tops of trees in woods and parks, it is often revealed by its quick, thin drumming and high calls. Numbers fluctuate from year to year, and local declines have been linked to the loss of standing dead wood.

Did you know?

  • It is the smallest woodpecker in Europe.
  • It uses thin dead branches that larger woodpeckers avoid, giving it a feeding niche of its own.

Voice

Song
Call
Drumming

About the species

Identification

A tiny black-and-white woodpecker with a barred “ladder” back. The male has a red crown, the female a black one; unlike most pied woodpeckers it lacks red under the tail. It can resemble a small White-backed Woodpecker, but the lack of red undertail and its very small size separate it; its drumming is short and weak.

Family

Picidae

Size

Small (sparrow)

Colours

black, white, red, brown

About the habitat

Mature deciduous woodland, riverside groves, parks and old orchards with plenty of dead wood – especially willow, birch and alder stands with standing dead trees and thin dead branches.

Diet

Mainly insects. It chips into rotten wood and thin dead branches for wood-boring larvae, and in the breeding season takes more surface-living insects such as aphids and caterpillars from foliage and bark; nestlings are fed mainly on these.

Behaviour

Creeps along trunks and slender branches, often high in the canopy, chipping at decayed wood. It gives sharp “keek” calls and a rattle instead of a true song, and drums a short, rapid, light roll. It roosts in old holes and excavates a small nest hole in decaying wood, both sexes sharing incubation. Mostly resident but somewhat nomadic.

Sources

Photo: Andrey Gulivanov, CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Male lesser spotted woodpecker (Dryobates minor).png

Sound: Mirko Tomasi, XC753815, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/753815

Sound: Alexander Kürthy, XC389106, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/389106

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC1107910, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/1107910

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_spotted_woodpecker

See also