Great Spotted Woodpecker ( Dendrocopos major )

A day of heavy showers coming close together, in other words a wet day! After the excitement and exertions of the weekend I was quite happy for a quiet day in.  This of course limited the opportunities for photography.

So I have settled, as I often do for a shot of a bird at the feeder.  This time  male Great Spotted Woodpecker.  GSW are one of the comparatively few species which have thrived in the last 40 years or so.  There are now about 5 times as many as there were in the 60-70 decade.  There are now about 130,000 pairs.   Finally a useless but interesting fact, when "drumming" the GSW is producing 10 & 40 knocks per second.