Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
Dendrocopus minor
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Distribution Britain 1,959 (-4.4%) Ireland 0
Numbers breeding: Britain 27,500 Ireland 0 European status: 3,700,000 (1% in Britain and Ireland) British population trend: increasing strongly (+185% CBC){-42%} How likely are you to record it? 1265 squares (28.2%) Ranked 36 |
For many people our smallest woodpecker is a bird of mystery. Many of them, living in big deciduous trees, seldom come lower than 10 metres and are often very difficult to see. In the 19th century these birds seem to have bred throughout England and Wales except for the very north and the extreme west. Some losses were recorded in areas where the habitat was cleared — mostly through felling of orchards, for instance, when the cider apple trees were cleared in Hereford and Somerset. There are no records from Ireland and only very tentative possible breeding records from Scotland. The population is hard hit by cold winter weather but seems to recover fairly well. The spread of Dutch Elm disease with the consequent extra dead wood helped. However the effect did not last — possibly because the thinner dead wood was quickly removed from the trees by gales — and the high level of the CBC from 1976 to 1984 dropped quickly. The loss is more than 80%, very worrying as it does not coincide with cold winters. The losses documented in the second Breeding Atlas are particularly concentrated in the West Country and West Midlands. There was a slight extension in breeding range into Northumbria. Recent trends almost all point to the species being in real trouble.
The following Bird On! picture is available:
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (Watercolour by Robert Gillmor)
The following Bird On! sketch is available:
From
The
State of the Nations Birds
Copyright © 2000 by Chris Mead