Middle Spotted Woodpecker

• 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.
• Unlike other woodpeckers it barely hammers at trunks: it searches through the bark and uses its long tongue to pull grubs out of holes.
• Its nesting cavities later serve as shelter for other woodland species.
• In the Iberian Peninsula it lives at the south-western limit of its world range, spread across the Cantabrian Mountains, the Basque-Navarrese hills and the Pyrenees. The oak wood of Izki Natural Park, in Álava, holds one of its largest Iberian populations, with about 315 territories. In 2019 it appeared for the first time in the Aragonese Pyrenees, and in 2021 its first breeding there was confirmed.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

A strict specialist of humid oak woods and mature deciduous forest with rough-barked oaks and trees more than 35 cm in diameter: Pyrenean oak, sessile oak, pedunculate oak and Portuguese oak woodland. In Spain it is confined to the Cantabrian Mountains, the Basque-Navarrese ranges and the Pyrenees, from the Ancares of Lugo to the Val d'Aran, in a very patchy way

Gestation / incubation

12 days, with both parents incubating

Litter / clutch size

4-7 white eggs, laid in May. The chicks are fed for 22-24 days until they make their first flights

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List; SEO/BirdLife (ficha, III Atlas: Ciudad y Robles 2022, y Libro Rojo 2021); Lorente y Palacio 2023, Pirineos 178; Ciudad, Fernández-García y Robles 2020 (POCTEFA Habios); Fernández-García 2016, Ornis Hungarica 24(1); Pasinelli 2003, BWP Update 5; Fombellida, García y Rollán 2009, Quercus 275; Asturnatura

Best time: All year round in mature oak woods in the north of the peninsula; it is resident