If you can't beat them...

By Jerra

Great Spotted Woodpecker ( Dendrocopos major )

I nearly entitled this "Damn!  It didn't look hard when Mum did it".

I spotted this juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker struggling with the feeders.  It hadn't quite perfected the landing, sometimes OK sometimes not quite OK.  At one point it flew off the feeder to "perch" on part of the feeder support.  Then it ended up under the perch body horizontal to the ground.  Sadly I missed that shot.

The telltale sign of it being a juvenile is the red crown, males have a red nape and females no red.  Over the last 50 or so years the population has increased and unexpectedly colonisation of Ireland began in 2008.  Genetic studies have suggested the UK is the likely source of the colonisers.  Great Spotted Woodpeckers are distributed all over the UK apart from the very far north of Scotland and the Scottish offshore islands.  

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