Anyone have good garden bird knowledge?

[Pepperwand]

Apologies for the rubbish quality photo and very boring question....my dad has been talking about a woodpecker that comes to visit his bird table....can anyone tell me what type of woodpecker it is? I don't know whether it's greater or lesser spotted.

Greater spotted. Their lovely! Congratulations

Lesser! Lovely. We get both Greater and Green woodpeckers here.

they’re

Great spotted juvenile male

It's a great spotted woodpecker in juvenile plumage (adult female has no red on her head, adult male just has a red spot on the nape). Lesser is tiny and doesn't have the big white shoulder patches.

I thin Great Spotted? Although the way it's sitting is quite squat which is more like Lesser it's got a plain black back? I'm not an expert - our great spotted has just come back today after a summer away which is lovely!

Oh sorry as PP said, greater but juvenile 🤦‍♀️

I’m very jealous. I find them absolute fascinating to watch.

Oh you lot are lovely. The reason I ask is because I was thinking of getting him a print/sketch for Christmas but then I got lost down a rabbit hole of woodpecker identification and I'm rubbish at this sort of thing .

Greater speed. They're relatively common. Lesser spotted are rare - and much smaller! See the RSPB site for ID.

Speed = spotted! 🙄

What a lovely idea.

Do you know what food he puts on his bird table? I’d love to attract woodpeckers to my garden. I think we’ve only ever had one.

@MayFayre

What a lovely idea.

Do you know what food he puts on his bird table? I’d love to attract woodpeckers to my garden. I think we’ve only ever had one.

I have a woodpecker, and he's attracted to my fat balls and peanuts (not in shell)

Yes, they're fond of peanuts.

Mine likes the flutterbutter peanut feeders (and so do all the other birds, including the bloody magpies, who learn how to get it however hard I make it for them)

www.bigwildthought.co.uk have lovely t shirts/hoodies/pencil cases etc with Woodpeckers embroidered on them.

We often get great spotted woodpeckers. At the moment they’re usually after the fat balls in a feeder.
They go for anything fatty. When it’s very cold I often make a ‘bird pudding’ for the bird table - a block of lard melted and all sorts stirred in - porridge oats, bird seed, any bits of crusts or crumbs, raisins, scraps of meat or bacon fat, etc. Once it’s cold I put a dollop or two on to the bird table. I usually put some on the ground somewhere for the ground feeders like blackbirds and robins, too.

I swear the GSWs can smell it since they will appear so quickly.

@Purplewithred thank you that's really helpful.

I think it's fat balls he usually uses for feeding the birds, although he gets the odd squirrel and rat too

[quote Pepperwand]@Purplewithred thank you that's really helpful.

I think it's fat balls he usually uses for feeding the birds, although he gets the odd squirrel and rat too [/quote]
If he gets rats eating the bird food, maybe he'd like a pole bird feeder?