Woodie ruffles feathers on east coast

IN the past couple of months there have been some developments in the story of the attempt by greater spotted woodpeckers to re-colonise this country after an absence of several hundred years.

Reports of sightings of individual woodpeckers in eastern counties have been increasing in number since about 2004, but now there is official proof that the birds have bred successfully.

Dick Coombes of BirdWatch Ireland assembled a team of helpers to look for nests in May and June of this year. The greatest numbers of reports were of birds in mature deciduous woodland in Co Wicklow, so that’s where the team concentrated its efforts.

The woodpeckers bore a small hole high up in a tree and then dig out a nest cavity inside the trunk or a large limb. They prefer slightly diseased wood as this is easier to peck. This makes the nest very hard to spot from the ground, particularly as the leaves are out on the trees by the time the nesting activity gets into full swing.

Woodpeckers sometimes make holes just to roost in, so seeing a bird going in and out of a hole in a tree is not definite proof of breeding. However, the team worked extremely hard and came up with exciting results.

They found eight nests and further observation showed that seven of these successfully produced young. The birds that made the eighth nest didn’t even lay eggs and were probably a young and inexperienced pair that may well breed successfully next year. All but one of the nests were in large oak trees, the other was nearly 20 metres above ground in a very mature ash. There were probably other nests in Wicklow, but the team had limited time and couldn’t check out all the sites they wanted to.

It’s also possible that the birds have successfully bred in other counties. There are promising reports from Kilkenny and Meath and earlier this year birds were seen, and photographed, in and around the Donadea Forest Park in Co. Kildare and a possible nesting hole was located in the forest.

The greater spotted woodpecker is a remarkably elusive bird outside the breeding season. Despite the fact that they’re reasonably large and colourful they have an ability to disappear in their woodland habitat except when they’re looking for a mate or rearing a brood.

But they have one weakness – they have a fondness for peanut feeders. The pictures taken in Kildare were of a bird that had got into the habit of visiting a feeder in a garden just outside the Donadea Forest Park. They were taken through a closed window and the quality is not good, but they are adequate to make a definite identification of an adult female bird.

There is little doubt these birds were resident and breeding here in historical times. They seem to have become extinct around the time of the clearance of the last of our great native forests in the 1600s or early 1700s. Since then very occasional vagrant birds turned up.

It’s likely these vagrants were blown in from Scandinavia but I believe it’s more likely that the recent wave of colonisation came from Britain, possibly from Wales, where populations are expanding. There are slight differences between the Scandinavian and British races, but you really need to examine a dead bird to tell them apart and, thankfully, such an opportunity hasn’t arisen yet in Ireland. But it’s significant that there are several reports of Irish birds with the habit of visiting peanut feeders –- these feeders are much commoner in Welsh gardens than in the boreal forest of Scandinavia.

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