When you fill up your bird feeders in winter, there’s always a hope that you’ll attract something more exciting than loads of blue tits and a clumsy pigeon on a raid. And that’s where the great spotted woodpecker comes in. That’ll be the great (never greater) and probably not the lesser, which is twice as small and twice as rare.
Striking and stylishly monochrome with a splash or two of red and a dagger of a beak, this is the bird that, if there’s a patch of woodland nearby, arrives with a flourish in your garden on a cold afternoon. Watch it from your window (warmer, too), as the moment you open the back door it will be off – although it’s worth disturbing for a dazzling array of boldly barred…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2019