Elusive visitors... no more!

On Friday afternoon Pauline came in and hissed...
"They're back"
"Who are back?"
"The Black Woodpeckers... they just flew over me!!"
"What do you mean...THEY?"
"There were two of them and they've just flown into the old willows!!"
Up until this week, all we'd seen of them had been one large, floppy winged woodpecker flying overhead from one ridge to the other going  "breeep-breeep... breeep-breeep... breeep-breeep"... their flight call...
and by large, I mean bigger than a Jay or a Jackdaw!

I grabbed camera and dived out of the front door...
We could hear their "kweee" calls coming from the old trognes...
Black Woodpeckers [Dryocopus martius] Pic Noir have a wonderful range range of calls...
and I crept across the bridge...
and again....
very...verry.... verrry..... verrrry slowly....
across the open ground between the bridge and the trognes...

I saw a movement, raised the camera and managed to grab this shot....

A female Black Woodpecker in the green...

before it flew off.

I walked back up to the bridge to show Pauline...
"They are still here" she said, not looking at the picture... "Listen!!"
And yes, I could hear the "kweee" calls and the odd "breep"...
close by...
they were still in the willows...
this time I walked very quickly, but quietly, back to the willows and then crept slowly.... round to where I had first spotted one...
I could hear the "kweee" calls from a couple of places...
once heard, it is unmistakable.... extremely similar to an artisan telling you that that repair is going to cost an awful lot of money.
I saw movement and a female flew up onto a vertical branch...
this picture is as good as you are going to get...

Perched in the classic woodpecker pose...
the small red cap, white eye & bill all showing well.

I am using Manual focus at the moment because Autofocus is always slightly off the spot...
but Autofocus would have done better than this...
had I remembered to focus, it would have been nice and sharp!!

She flew and was immediately replaced by the male...
I didn't know this until I looked at the pictures on the computer...

You can clearly see the full red cap of the male here....
and how close he landed to where the female was....
very slightly lower and a bit to the right!!

my thought was that she'd moved and re-settled in almost the same spot.
And "she" also flew off...
they were still in the willows, but at the far end of the five...
I crept quietly forward, but, more sightings and photos were not to be...
with their "breep"ing flight calls, I think they headed for the old pollarded alder in the middle of the meadow.

Pauline and I kept hearing them during the afternoon... at various places along the riverbank...
but late in the evening we saw the pair again...
I looked up to the top of our big walnut as I could hear the Turtle Dove purring...
and saw the unmistakable shape of the Black Woodpecker...
it would have made a very nice photograph....
I turned to tell Pauline... and it flew.
But only a couple of seconds later a second bird, presumably the male again, landed in exactly the same spot...
Pauline kept watch, but by the time I had got the camera....
I was just in time to see that one fly, too!!

It seems, though, that one bird exactly follows the other...
if they do stay around we might be able to learn more about their behaviour!

We are right in the middle of their breeding season and they are spreading*...
so these might be last year's juveniles needing new spaces!! 




* The BWP [Birds of the Western Palearctic] states that the population is increasing rapidly...
in France there was under 1000 pairs in the 1970s...
by 2002 it was around 32,000...
and Birdlife International [2004] reported the population to still be increasing in France, Belgium, etc...
and they are quite willing to use small patches of woodland if there are other patches nearby.
Another entry I noted was...
"Plant food rarely taken, though sometimes in quantity: fruits of cherry Prunus, apple Malus...."
Damn, another one after the cherries!!