IT’S ALL IN A MORNINGS WORK…..
Typical bark stripping by Three-toed Woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus)
For some time now I have been searching for the right place to record the calls of Three-toed Woodpecker. It is a species that is pretty secretive and whilst I had recordings of them drumming, and had seen them at close quarters on several occasions, I had never recorded their calls. Reference materials told me that their call was very similar to that of the Great Spotted Woodpecker, which is very common in my area. But having tracked down what felt like several hundred calls over the past several years, I had never yet seen a Three-toed calling.
Finally this year, I found a suitable location where a pair was nesting and interacting and where I could safely leave my microphones and recording gear unattended. It is always exciting for me to retrieve my equipment when I have done that, and start examining the files to see what I captured, knowing that it would be nature undisturbed by human presence.
Male Roe Deer. (Eirik Olsen on Unsplash)
This time was no exception. Listen to the file below, preferably through headphones then you can appreciate all the small subtleties.
The scene is a May morning, about 45mins after dawn, in a sub-alpine forest. The morning chorus is well underway, thrushes, finches and various others are singing away heartily. At 3 secs you just hear a flutter of wings and something lands with an audible “clunk” not far from the microphones. This is the Three-toed Woodpecker. They specialise in eating bark beetles and to get at them they very frequently strip off the bark down to solid wood underneath. So at 10secs you hear the first solid blows as the bird tests the bark and make its first incisions. At about 20s a Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus) enters the scene giving the bark which I think is an alarm or aggression call. For such a small animal it is deep and powerful. The woodpecker pauses a little around 23 secs, I guess it may have been assessing what all the noise was about, but soon settles back into its work. You can hear it adjusting its feet and shuffling around as it gets its beak in under the bark and peels it off with small tearing sounds. The bird is completely unconcerned by the Roe Deer and whatever was upsetting it, and continues its hunt for breakfast. The deer slowly moves deeper into the forest, still barking as it goes, and after a few last blows the woodpecker flies off at 1m57s, clearly satisfied with whatever it had achieved.
When I returned for my microphones, which were in the bigger tree to the right in the picture at the top, I noticed new damage to the nearby smaller tree. But it was only much later, at home, in front of my computer, that I understood what had been going on.
All in a day’s work for the Three-toed Woodpecker I guess……….
LEARN MORE about this woodpecker its behaviour, calls and drumming, HERE >>>>>>>
