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Day by day more and more ski tracks  appear on the wintery forest floor. Not everyone wants to ski on the paths, ready and lit up, instead they wish to drive in their own prints onto untouched snow of the fringe of the woods. There’s always a possibility to see or at least hear something or someone in the otherwise wintrily quiet woods. Tappings of the woodpeckers are rather muffled, not  resounding as they are at springtime: a moment of quiet and a repeat.

A woodpecker is working at the cone in his forge.

 

The great spotted woodpecker is our most common and often seen woodpecker. They are more numerous in winter, by a couple of hundred thousand birds, than in summer. Feathers on their back are black, with a big white patch on the shoulder. The underparts are white and the chest looks quite dirty. Feathers under his tail are bright red and the sides have white stripes. The great spotted woodpecker has a white spot on its forehead, and the crown of the head, or cap, is black. The male can be recognized by his red patch on the nape, the female’s nape is black.  A juvenile’s crown feathers are red and the undertail is pink. The tail is pointed and stiff, acting as  a support at working  the cones.

For a forge the woodpecker finds a crack in a branch or the trunk of a  hardwood or conifer tree, living or dried, and there can be many of them for one bird. The cone will be fixed with the tip up.