woodpecker sited in garden

Hi everybody i am a bit of a novice and a newby to this site so hope you understand if i make a hash of it!    I moved to my present abode about 12 months ago and am really enjoying the wildlife in my garden there are a number of large well established trees and shrubs and i get quite a variety of garden birds but today i was absolutely thrilled to see a spotted woodpecker feeding from my feeding station.  I have a variety of food for the birds but this one was at the peanuts.  Is this common ?

  • Hi Cinderella

    I am not going to say its common but Great Spotted Woodpeckers do like to visit peanut feeders, having said that i have never had one at mine so well done you, if you have a camera try and get some pictures we all love to see wildlife as well as hear about it. Oh yes and welcome to the forum.

    Shane

  • Hi Cinderella,

    Welcome to the forum from me too.

    We occasionally get Great Spotted Woodpeckers in my garden, they tend to like fat balls and suet cake when they visit us.

    They are not an uncommon garden visitor in areas with a reasonable amount of woodland and mature trees nearby.

    H

  • thankyou both for your swift replies i will be getting a decent camera soon and will hopefully get the chance to take photo if it returns but will need some tuition first on how to add photo.   also thankyou for re directing my question to the right place I did say i was a novice didnt I !!!!

  • Hi cinderella

    I currently have 3 Great Spotted Woodpeckers visiting my peanut feeders every day. I hardly ever look out and see none anywhere. They are always worth watching

  • Hi cinderella

    As others have said Great Spotted Woodpeckers are becoming quite frequent visitors to gardens when there's something they like to eat. This doesn't mean that they are any less pleasurable to see.  There are differences between the males, females and juveniles as Robbo has said. To help you differentiate between then I thought you might like to see some pics.

    The male with  a red nape at back of the neck

    The female with no red on the nape

    A juvenile with a red crown

    I hope this helps you to ID it if it returns as I'm sure it will.

  • great photos thanks they will be very useful  

  • Hi cinderella, a very warm welcome to the forum. I hope you enjoy it - it can be great fun, very informative and a good way of meeting people with similar interests. It can also get addictive!

    I have always had GSWs as I live in a rural location and they almost always feed on a peanut feeder. It has to be a non-squirrel proof one like the ones in TJs amazing photos, because they can't get to the peanuts otherwise. But as you can see from the photos they eat all sorts of food, whatever is available usually. I have occasionally seen some of mine eating the sunflower hearts too, although they find it hard to hold on to the feeder! They are quite shy, so if you try to photograph them, you may have to do it through a window, unless you have a telephoto lens.

    Hope you carry on enjoying your garden birds and send us some pics as soon as you can.

  • I agree about being addictive. this is a great place to while away the hours so between this and the bird watching i ll never have time for anything else !

  • Thank you for posting photos of the woodpeckers to help identify if they're male, female or young ones! I've been really getting into bird watching during Lockdown and bought a load of food and feeders to attract as much as possible... This morning we had a Great spotted woodpecker on the peanut feeder! A young one by the looks of it!

  • Hello Kellie, what lovely photos of the juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker, always a special visitor to have in the garden.     If you have any photos you want to share you can always just add them to THIS THREAD which is for all types of sightings.       The thread you added to is an old thread dating back 9 years.