looduskalender.ee

 

 

A familiar place, isn’t it? It is our web camera at the nest of the lesser spotted eagles where just now great spotted woodpeckers are busy. Our most numerous woodpecker, with just under 100 000 breeding pairs – the only one of the woodpecker species whose number has not decreased.

 

Such a well-known bird needs no description.The woodpecker pairs have formed, maybe even the nest hollow is hewn out already. By mid-May the female will have laid her clutch, there may be 4-7 white eggs; nesters in tree hollows have no need of protective colouring on the eggs. The incubation time is a little less than 2 weeks. The woodpecker chicks hatch naked and blind. Three weeks of care and proper insect food, and before Midsummer the woodpecker chicks are already prepared to leave the nest. Outside the nest the adults feed the young for about a week more.

 

In the video a female bird is in action to start with; the male with the red patch at the nape arrives at the end of the video. Should you see a great spotted woodpecker with a red cap on its crown in summer it is a young bird hatched this year.