Birdwatching - 3138 🐦

🦉 The black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius)

• Dryocopus (Greek): drys, dendron - tree; kopos, koptō - hit
• martius (lat.) : warlike, fighting; March

This huge stylish woodpecker is about the size of a crow.
Males wear a chic red cap on their heads. Females have a red spot shifted to the back of their heads instead of a cap. It is interesting to note that, unlike other birds, the young black woodpeckers, even when they are in the nest, already have this distinctive sexual characteristic.
The black woodpecker's special beauty is given by its powerful beak and unusual white eyes, which, in my opinion, give the bird a slightly crazy look.

Black woodpeckers feed mainly on ants and insects living under the bark and in the trunk of weakened or already dead trees. Plant food also plays an important role in their diet. These are pine nuts, rowan and blueberry berries, small fruits of the wild apple, in the spring they drink birch sap. Occasionally, like many other woodpeckers, they show predatory inclinations, that is, they steal chicks from the nests of other birds.