Female Great Spotted Woodpecker feeding its young

Male Great Spotted Woodpecker

As it's half term this week I am busy with my girls but I did manage to get up early and watch the Woodpeckers busily feeding their young (I will blog this later). I expect the young to leave the nest any day now so I decided to take my wife, our two girls and one of their friends to see the young being fed later on in the morning. My girls are only 3 and 5 years old so we only stayed for about 15 minutes. It was such a lovely time watching the girls enthralled by the male Woodpecker dancing through the trees calling to the young until finally feeding them.

The young sticking the heads right out of the hole to be fed and you can clearly see their red crests.






While I am up at the Woodpeckers nest and even while I had my whole family with me people walk right by without even noticing the Woodpeckers. The young are so noisy now and there is a constant barrage of noise from them that they can be heard from 50 feet away yet people walk right past without looking up. These same people will probably be glued to Springwatch next week on the television, when they show the Woodpeckers in their nest boxes, but they do not notice wildlife when it is all around them.