Least ConcernMiddle Spotted Woodpecker
Dendrocoptes medius
45 countries137 parks
Species group · Birds
WAnimals has 7 species of woodpecker, spread across 2 families (Melanocharitidae, Picidae).
Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
1 species in this group is in a threatened category according to the IUCN.
Recorded in 52 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
In 2019 it was recorded for the first time in the Aragonese Pyrenees, at Castejón de Sos; in 2021 a pair was confirmed breeding and in 2022 eleven territorial individuals were located in the Ésera valley. It is not known whether this is a relict population that had gone unnoticed or a recent colonisation.
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Unlike other woodpeckers it barely hammers at trunks: it searches through the bark and uses its long tongue to pull grubs out of holes.
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Its nesting cavities later serve as shelter for other woodland species.
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Those adaptations absorb the impact and protect its brain from repeated damage.
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It eats wood-boring insect grubs, seeds and nuts, and occasionally the eggs and chicks of other birds.
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It lives in woodland of every kind, and in parks and gardens with mature trees, across much of the Palaearctic.
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It is one of the very few woodpeckers in the world with only three toes: most woodpeckers have four, arranged zygodactylously.
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Ranges calculated from the profiles that record the figure, not from all 7.
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It is a glacial relict in southern Europe: its southern populations were left isolated in the mountains as the ice retreated.
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