Great Spotted Woodpeckers

A few weeks a go, a good friend and fellow wildlife photographer was watching a Great Spotted Woodpecker starting to make a hole in an old tree. On more recent visits it became obvious that this looked like it could be their nest.


Last weekend we made a trip up to the woods to find that they now had young and the parents were busy gathering food.



It was amazing to watch the parents going back and forth bringing beak fulls of insects back to the nest having been only gone for a few minutes.


The nest is in an old tree near a bank so we can sit at almost the same height as the hole with a lovely backdrop of the woods behind.



There are a few very convenient branches for the adults to land on before entering the nest hole which made for some lovely shots.



I also noticed that on leaving the nest the parents would leave with what I think is the little poo sacks of the young and then deposit them elsewhere so that any predators would not know where the nest is.


This is a really magical find and I cannot wait to go back and see them again. I am hoping for some really good light this week so I can attempt to get some better flight shots.