Guess what!Guess what!

That's great Arlene !!!
Now he's been once he might come again and i know you'll have your camera nearby, i know that's exactly how i would be !!!
We'll watch this space ..... :)

was he a red/wh/black one, or the other sort with green on him?
Both kinds are so smart! My daughter was thrilled to see one early in the morning recently - he must hv known that her RSPB membership literature had just arrived.

~it was a red black and white one~looked for all the world like a huge goldfinch for a second.
Problem with pics is that our double glazing distorts any photos and by the time I get outside trying not to scare them off they are usually gone~I am going to have to get a mini hide and sit out there!

I understand the excitement...I go as far as raising the screen to my window so I can get good shots lol risking all sorts of insect invasion for my birds.

GF has a pair...female and male that visit his feeders on a regular basis...his are quite big..the male has a red spot on the back of his head and the female doesn't, he was quite thin and she was quite fat for a while..lol..he finally started to gain weight after feeding at the feeders for a while.....we even saw a young one that looked like them but had blurry markings like theirs with some little spotty feathers on the front yet..

~ I was surprised how big he was ~I have lots of food out there so who knows he may be back!

I hope he is back for you Arlene. They do seem to be birds of regular habit. My brother who lives, not far from Dover has had them visit his nut feeder regularly (daily) for a number of years now so there would seem to be a good chance that now he has found a food source that he will be back.

I can imagine how excited you were. Like you I often hear them but they don't seem to come into my garden - at least not when I'm watching! I hope he returns again, when you have camera at the ready :)

Great! I've only seen one once - back in Kent. We do get green ones here, eating the ants (hooray!) out of the lawn, and I've heard that drumming noise too - I don't know if that's our green ones, but I suppose it must be.

I think it's more likely to be the great spotted that's drumming Spritz> As far as I know the green doesn't drum. Bonkers should be able to clear up this for us. Where are you Bonkers. We need your help.

Wow! Really? I shall have to get the binoculars out!

we used to get the spotted woodpecker in our garden occasionaly . last year however , it attacked a nest box that had blue tits in residence , punched a great hole in the front and killed the baby birds!
so we attatched a metal front cover to afford more protection to the box and moved the peanuts/fat balls away from the middle of the garden , to an area just to the side of the back corner of the house.the small birds are happy feeding there but i think it's too close for the woodpeckers.
another pair of blue tits nested in the box this year and produced , and they have all fledged.
hope you enjoy your sightings of woody , he is a very beautiful bird....................steve

my mum had one feeding last year. it came at the same time of day for a few weeks. hopefully yours will come back tommorow...

Must have been the annual day out for woodpeckers yesterday. For the first time in a couple of years I saw 2 fly past my window and land either side of the pear tree about 15' away in the front garden They went up and down several times so I had a good look at them. They would probably have stayed longer but my husband chose that moment to arrive home in the car!

How exciting Arlene. I suppose I take the greater spotted woodpecker for granted as we have them visit daily. It was a nice surprise yesterday though when there were 2 of them, I looked through the binoculars and one was a baby as he was grey where he should be white. It was pecking away at a dead tree stump and then the mother collected fat ball food and took it over and fed him. We get the green woodpecker too to get ants from the edge of the lawn but not as often.

How fabulous for you Arlene...what a lovely wildlife haven you have created !

Toto...you are right it will be the Great Spotted drumming....................how lovely...

Yes Toto....both bore holes but Greater Spotted ues drumming to communicate....kind of woodpecker morse code..dot dot..must dash !

Thanks Bonkers, I thought that was the case but it's always good to check.

Ray, so the drumming isnt anything to do with making a nest hole? Do they usually use dead trees to drum. Ours are at it all the time

Have an old readers digest book of birds Dawn and it suggests they choose dead trees to nest in as softer to excavate and often filled with a more readily available source of grubs for young .

Greater spotted will even drum on telegraph poles so harder surfaces better for sound to travel when declaring their territory.

Of course with all the hard work you ve been doing they could view you and John as serious rivals with all the hammering and drilling !

Ha ha, yes, lots of drilling and hammering been going on here but quietening down now. Been shovelling that flippin manure all afternoon again - had to move it to a suitable place. We have a few dead trees in the hedge that died due to the last couple of years wet weather, thought we'd leave them for the birds :-)

We saw our first woodpecker when we were in Aviemore, which we were able to identify from the bird book you so kindly sent! :-)

I bet the drumming is coming from the old ash tree, then. Do they shout 'timber!!!' before the tree falls over? LOL.