Friday 20 April 2018

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker - Darley Dale

Is this Derbyshire's rarest regular breeding bird? 
According to the Derbyshire Ornithological Society there has been no more than three proven breeding pairs per year in the County during the past decade and none at all in 2014.
Nationally the species has declined by 82% since 1970 and is now Red Listed which is the highest level of UK conservation concern.

Investigations by the RSPB identified poor breeding success  as a factor for the decline but the reasons for this are not yet known.

I have seen Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers before in the Darley Dale area but not since 2012. However, I saw a pair yesterday with both birds drumming and the male calling occasionally and I photographed the male below in the same location this morning. 
They are fantastic birds and it would be great if they could nest successfully locally.
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker - male
Having just worked out how to add a sound file to a blog post I've included below a recording made when I took the photo above which starts of with three drumming sessions from the Lesser Spotted followed by a louder drum from the Great Spotted followed by further Lesser Spotted and two more bursts from the Greater.


2 comments:

  1. These sound bites are a great addition to your blog Andy, thanks for sharing

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Rachel, for some reason it doesn't seem to work on Safari but is fine on Google, Bing etc.

    ReplyDelete

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