A Major Visit (read info text for story)

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THE VIDEO OF THE WOODPECKERS IN MY GARDEN: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE_Dk3S3B3Q

MY BEST PHOTOS (MOSTLY NOT YET ON FLICKR): www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...

 

THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:

The great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) is probably my favorite bird to photograph, but that fella had me waiting even longer than the elusive jay: It took me well over a year to finally get a shot form a close enough distance, and it literally required help from the heavens - but more on that later.

 

Ever since I saved a young woodpecker as a kid - the little guy had gotten himself entangled in one of the nets our local farmer had put over his cherry trees - I've had a particular affinity for this beautiful species, and when I decided to feed the birds in my garden in early 2023 (for reasons you can read all about here: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/52994208987/in/datepo... ), I naturally hoped I would also get a visit from Mr. or Mrs. D. Major.

 

But no member of the Picidae family showed up that winter, and when spring arrived and I laid out some cherries in my epic struggle to capture the Eurasian jay (a tale you can find here: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/54147481326/in/datepo... ), I again harbored the hope the fruit might do the trick and also attract a great spotted woodpecker. Alas, the species simply never came close enough to my garden to even see my buffet for birds.

 

I didn't blame them; there was just nothing on my premises to attract them from afar: no old trees nor any dead wood that could have competed with the gorgeous chestnut forest around our village, and so 2023 went by without a visit of either Mr. or Mrs. Woodpecker.

 

Cut to spring 2024, which brought some major changes to my garden. For one, our whole region was drowning in seemingly endless rain, and the upper part of my garden looked like the world's dirtiest swimming pool. After a winter that had been catastrophically dry, in late February heaven's floodgates suddenly opened and then hardly ever closed again until the beginning of June.

 

We'd often had prolonged rainfalls in spring in the past, but this was a whole new dimension, and the effect on nature was quite drastic. There were floods and landslides all over, and the pollination of many plants simply didn't happen, because the constant downpour had taken a terrible toll on insect life (I had to pollinate the zucchini plants in my garden myself with a cotton swab, because even when the sun was out, there were hardly any bees to be seen).

 

For many birds in our region this spelled doom, because the cold and damp weather conditions coincided with their breeding season. I noticed there were more species than usual coming to my garden, because in their desperate search for food, even otherwise rather shy birds left the forest and flew farther distances.

 

And thus it happened that in May 2024 a pair of great spotted woodpeckers - a male and a female - finally came to check out my garden. I shamefully admit I was over the moon (after all, the reason for their visit was certainly nothing to be joyful about). To my surprise they ignored the cherries I had laid out on the tree trunk in front of my shed: what they instead went absolutely crazy for were hazelnuts.

 

Observing the couple was so much fun - and incredibly fascinating. They first "chiseled" a few tiny holes into my fig tree with their impressive beaks (and, as I later discovered, also into the wooden table underneath my pergola 😂 ), then they would each collect a single hazelnut from the tree trunk and hammer it with great precision into one of the holes. Once the nut was in place, they would hack it into little pieces which they would then gobble up.

 

This, however, did not go unnoticed by the ever attentive local jay. The clever fella liked my buffet for birds well enough, but he knew I was lurking behind the shed's wall next to the tree trunk where I fed the birds, and THAT he didn't like.

 

But now all he had to do was wait until the woodpeckers carried a hazelnut to the fig tree, where it was at a much safer distance from the nasty human, and as soon as the nut was fixed in its hole and ready for the taking, he would bully away the rightful owner who had done all the work and cheekily steal it (I was even able to film this behavior once, it happens at the 1minute-10seconds mark: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE_Dk3S3B3Q ).

 

Thankfully, Mr. and Mrs. D. Major didn't let such rude behavior from the locals deter them from my garden; as long as I made sure there were always enough hazelnuts to go around, they accepted the fact that they would lose one to the jay every once in a while and kept coming - and thus I got lots of opportunities to photograph them.

 

After two weeks, the pair even surprised me with the most wonderful gift: they brought Junior along and fed him in the fig tree (which you can also see in the clip I linked above: Junior is the one with the red "cap").

 

It seems my garden is now an integral part of their territory even when I don't feed them, and they visit it every day. But this may also have to do with another change that occurred in my garden in spring '24, namely that I - among many other things - dragged at least two dozen old tree stumps into it, which the woodpeckers love.

 

The only downside is that they feel so territorial about my garden now that they chase away any green woodpeckers that want to come near, which means I don't have a chance to get a photo of those beautiful birds - but I don't wanna complain; I'm more than happy, and I know you just can't win them all. 😊

 

As always, many thanks for reading and commenting: have a great start into the new week everyone! ❤🙏😊

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