Birdwatching - 1929 🐦

🦉 The black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius)

• Dryocopus (Greek): drys, dendron - tree; kopos, koptō - hit
• martius (lat.) : warlike, fighting; March

These noisy and loud woodpeckers can be heard from afar, and you will not confuse their calls with anyone else. They often shout at each other so as not to lose each other, or vice versa, to find others, and they also shout in flight.
It is not difficult to guess that their main diet is insects, which they get from under the bark, which is literally removed from the tree. At the beginning of spring, they like to feast on ants crawling along tree trunks, or even raid anthills. In autumn and winter they can feed on plant seeds and berries.

At the end of summer, woodpeckers begin to molt, and in my photos you can see this. At this time they look, let’s say, not very beautiful.

I recently learned that these woodpeckers have a peculiarity in the construction of their heads - large occipital ridges are located on the skull. They were formed due to frequent turns of the head to the left or right. Other species of woodpeckers do not have them.