European Green Woodpecker – Picus viridis 

The European green woodpecker belongs to the woodpecker Picidae family.

There are four subspecies.

They are present  in Turkey, Iran, the British Isles, Moscow, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, in the Iberian Peninsula, in the mountain forests of the Pyrenees-Atlantiques.

The European Green Woodpecker is about the size of a jay, all have green upperparts, paler yellowish underparts, a red crown and moustachial stripe which has a red centre in males but is all black in females. In the male, on each side of the beak, he wears a red spot framed black that sketches a mustache. Youth are stained almost like adults, but the plumage is heavily spotted and barred.

The language of the peaks is tapered, long, slimy and provided many corpuscles tact, whose small end, flat and pointed, is decorated with small hooks. Its lifetime is estimated at 7 years.

It likes orchards, groves, hedges, parks, gardens, trees, forest edges, light woods, next to the meadows are indispensable. You can also find them in parks and large gardens. It feeds on the ground, looking for nests, larvae of insects, berries and seeds.

From the beginning of January, we see couples exploring the trees and starting drilling holes in relatively soft wood. Towards the end of April, the couple hollow cavity 50 inches deep in a rotten tree trunk. A nest hole is excavated in a tree. From May to July, the female lays four to  six eggs  which hatch after 19 to 20 days. The young hatch, their skin is bare and they are blind; both parents feed the ants and their pupae. The young leave the cavity after 20 days.