Three-toed woodpeckers are represented by small birds with a body length not exceeding 25 cm, with a mass ranging from 50 to 90 g. The woodpecker has rather large wings with a span of up to 35 cm. The body ends with a short, wedge-shaped tail. The legs of the bird are small in size with three toes on them, two of which have an anterior direction, and the third looks backwards. The body is covered with hard and dense plumage with a complete absence of down.
The color palette is dominated by black colors, which are distributed almost throughout the body. However, the body is not devoid of white markings. This species is somewhat different from other similar representatives. For example, the head of this representative is not covered with a bright “red cap”. In the female, a red spot on the back of the head cannot be seen on the head.
The head of the male is characterized by the presence of a "cap" with a lemon yellow color. On the head of the female, a silvery-gray color with dark streaks is noted.
The nature of nutrition
Representatives of this species mainly use insects for food, which are ants, spiders, and larvae. The bark of trees is also present in the diet. Although this bird belongs to the woodpeckers, it does not tend to frequent tree chiselling. For the most part, they are engaged in peeling the bark with finding food for themselves under it, represented by insects. This is done, sometimes, so intensively that a rather large spruce can turn out to be “bare” in a day. Sometimes at one time the tree is not completely cleared. In this case, the woodpecker will return to it again until it completely completes the process of cleaning the tree trunk from the bark.Usually the bird searches for food at a height of 1-3 m from the ground. Mostly dead trees are used, although sometimes the female looks for food on living ones. In the spring, they drink juice from trees, and berries are present in small quantities in their diet.
Reproduction features
This species belongs to typical monogamous. Sexual maturity occurs when the bird is one year old. The behavior of males during the mating season is interesting. They look for a dry knock and begin to peck at it with their beak. As a result, a characteristic vibrating sound is created. It is he who is attractive to females.
Every year, for the construction of a new hollow, they choose a tree that has died or become rotten. It can be a representative of conifers, or a deciduous tree, represented by birch, poplar. On average, it takes a little more than a week to work on the formation of a hollow. Usually it is located at a height of 1 to 10 m from the surface of the earth. Buildings with a greater height are also known. Both representatives of one pair are engaged in this. The bottom of the hollow is lined with wood dust. It will serve as bedding for the eggs that the female will lay. In total, she will bring them no more than 6 pieces. They are covered with a shiny shell. This happens in the middle or in the second half of May. The eggs are incubated for two weeks by both parents. They are able to replace each other 6-7 times a day.
Two weeks later, chicks emerge from the eggs. Although they are naked, blind, and seemingly completely helpless, they already require a large amount of food at this time. The chicks are very noisy. 4 weeks pass and the chicks begin to leave the nest. At the same time, they are already making attempts to fly independently. Having learned to fly a little, they still try to stay closer to the “family hearth”. They do not tend to fly far from the hollow, as their parents still continue to feed them. They will stay in the hollow for another month.
Characteristics of the habitat
Birds are characterized by a sedentary lifestyle. They can be found in northern Europe and Asia. Also, their habitat is North America. The preferred area for them is the taiga area with the presence of coniferous or mixed forests. Swampy and flooded forests appeal to birds, since it is in them that there is no shortage of rotten trees, where woodpeckers will arrange a hollow for themselves.A characteristic feature is that the three-toed woodpecker is referred to as the orderlies of the forest. It destroys many harmful insects. For this, he uses only diseased and dead trees. He will never spoil a perfectly healthy tree.
Three-toed woodpeckers are silent birds. Compared to other woodpeckers, they have a poorer repertoire. During the mating season, woodpeckers make sounds similar to chirping or chirping. A tree is hammered with drumming by both sexes. By nature, it resembles an automatic burst.
Video: three-toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus)
Class: Birds Order: Woodpeckers Family: Woodpeckers Genus: Three-toed woodpecker Species: Three-toed woodpecker
Three-toed Woodpecker - Picoides tridactylus
Appearance.
The sizes are medium (larger than a starling). The top of the neck, back, wings, tail and spots on the sides are black, the underside of the body, spots on the back, wings, tail and stripes on the sides of the head are white. The top of the head of the male is golden yellow, that of the female is dirty whitish. There are 3 fingers on the paw.
Lifestyle.
Inhabits dense coniferous forests on plains and mountains. Pretty common resident bird. The nest is placed in a hollow, the entrance to the hollow is round, the clutch consists of 3-6 white eggs in May - June. It is more secretive than other woodpeckers, alone and in pairs. Silent, the voice is a sharp monosyllabic cry.
It feeds on insects and their larvae (mainly bark beetles). It differs from other woodpeckers by its yellow or white top of its head and three toes on its paw.
Reference books of the geographer and traveler V.E. Flint, R.L. Boehme, Yu.V. Kostin, A.A. Kuznetsov. Birds of the USSR. Publishing house "Thought" Moscow, edited by prof. G.P. Dementieva. Image: "Three-toed Woodpecker - Finlandia 0005 (3)" by Francesco Veronesi from Italy - Three-toed Woodpecker - Finlandia 0005 (3). Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 from Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Three-toed woodpecker, or yellow-headed woodpecker (lat. Picoides tridactylus) is a bird of the woodpecker family.
A small bird with a rather large head and a sharp beak; slightly smaller than the Great Spotted Woodpecker, but half the size of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. Length 21-24 cm, wingspan 33-37 cm, weight 50-90 g. The plumage is black and white, but from the side it looks rather dark because of the predominantly black sides and wings. Red markings on the head and undertail, characteristic of other woodpeckers, are absent. Instead of them, the male and young birds of both sexes have a lemon-yellow cap on the crown, the female has a silver-gray cap with dark streaks. On the sides of the head there is an alternation of black and white stripes, one of which forms a narrow "mustache" from the angle of the beak, and the second stretches from the eye and descends along the side of the neck. A white stripe runs along the back from the neck to the rump - clearly visible in most forms and poorly developed in the alpinus subspecies inhabiting the mountains of Central Europe. The lower part is whitish with dark markings of a longitudinal, transverse or V-shaped shape; the intensity of these marks decreases from west to east and from north to south. There are 3 fingers on the foot - two pointing forward and one back. The fourth finger is reduced. The flight is fast and straight. The distribution area is a strip of coniferous and mixed forests of Eurasia from Scandinavia and Central Europe east to Kamchatka, Sakhalin, Hokkaido and the Korean Peninsula. Inhabits mature coniferous and mixed forests of the taiga type, often oppressed or dry. In Central and Eastern Europe, it settles in mountainous wooded areas between 650 and 1900 m above sea level, choosing hard-to-reach slopes overgrown with coniferous trees - spruce, pine, European cedar, or semi-marshy areas with ash and alder, as well as oak and hornbeam groves. In northern Europe, it breeds in mature and overmature forests dominated by spruce and fir. In Siberia, it is common in continuous dark coniferous taiga and larch forests. Everywhere it prefers low-lying flooded areas of the old forest, where there are many diseased and dead trees. Often found in burnt areas, clearings, on the outskirts of swamps. It feeds on insects, mainly larvae and pupae of xylophages. Among the beetles, bark beetles and barbels predominate, to a lesser extent it feeds on leaf beetles, gold beetles, weevils, ground beetles, pied beetles, narrow beetles and some others. Of the moths, it eats the larvae of scoops, moths, leafworms and woodworms. In addition to eating wood, it sometimes eats other invertebrates - ants, spiders, stoneflies, grasshoppers, flies, bees, even mollusks. From vegetable feed it feeds on tree sap, occasionally eats rowan berries. Cones do not hammer. Most often, it obtains food from under the bark of trees, sometimes managing to peel off a large spruce in a day, where up to 10 thousand bark beetle larvae can hide. In summer, it also often catches openly crawling insects. Less often it hammers rotten wood or searches the surface of trunks and branches. If the tree is not completely cleared at once, return to it the next day. After the snow has melted, he examines the boughs lying on the ground and the rotten stumps covered with moss. Feeding on the surface of the earth is very rare. It usually feeds at a height of 1-3 m from the ground, giving preference to dead trees, often lopsided or lying on their side. During the nesting period, males, on average, forage slightly lower than females, preferring stumps and choosing larger trunks. On the other hand, females sometimes feed on living trees.
According to the classification of endangered species, the three-toed woodpecker is in the LC category - the risk of extinction is minimal.
In general, the three-toed woodpecker is a rare Red Book bird of the Moscow region. This is due to the fact that he prefers to live in dark coniferous forests (mainly spruce), so here he is on the border of his range. Although if we take its entire range, then it is quite wide and occupies a huge area from Western Europe to Kamchatka. But despite this, the population density of this woodpecker is quite small everywhere, because. he likes a solitary lifestyle, without a lot of competitors.
So imagine the Moscow region. Here and so the forests are left with gulkin's nose, so give this comrade spruce forests, moreover, dried up and so that there are more xylophages (bark beetles). So our region cannot boast of a large number of them, in contrast to, say, BPD. Here in the Red Book of the Moscow Region it is said that their number in the region is estimated at about 1000 pairs. Moreover, most of them live in the area of the Klin-Dmitrovsky ridge. And in the south of the region and in the near Moscow region, it is especially rare.
In connection with the above, each meeting of the three-toed in Elk Island was an event for me. I was especially glad when V.V. Solodushkin found his nest here in 2011. Apparently, this was the first recorded nesting of a woodpecker in Losiny Island.
The range of the three-toed woodpecker includes a large territory of Russia.
A small analysis showed that the nesting of the woodpecker in Losiny Ostrov coincided with the beginning of a big disaster in our forests - the invasion of the bark beetle-typographer. Many old spruce forests in the region perished, some of them fell under sanitary felling. There is a lot of information about this on the Internet. The outbreak of the bark beetle is associated with the drought of 2010, when the entire region was in smoke and fires.
Three-toed woodpecker biotope in Losiny Island
But for whom is trouble, and for whom is daily bread. So this winter, in the dried spruce forests, there was just a festival of woodpeckers: yellow, white-backed, BPD and, of course, three-toed. With such an abundance of food, it is not a sin to nest. And nested. In general, I will not muddy the waters, I found two nests in Elk Island. Been watching them all June. The chicks successfully hatched and left their native hut. I must say that two nests in Losiny Island, located a kilometer from each other, is good, it means the birds are comfortable here. I decided to present the details of observations and specific ornithological information about nesting in the form of an article in the Moskovka magazine, for those who are interested to read.
In addition to me, three-toed nests were found this year victor_tyakht And a_nikoros . If someone else found in the Moscow region - write, I will consolidate the data in one article.
In general, one of the nests was at a surprisingly low and convenient height for photographing - exactly 1 m. I wanted to shoot how they feed adult chicks so that they protrude from the hollow. But I did not calculate the date of departure and the chicks flew out earlier than I tried to implement my plan.
What I learned from my observations. Birds replace each other during incubation. The male usually fed the chicks. When disturbed, the male makes sounds similar to the sounds of BPD anxiety, which I have not heard from Veprintsev. Hollows are built strictly in dry trees, and not necessarily in spruce, but also in pine and aspen.
Well, here are some photos from observing their life (mostly on weekends).
Incubation stage. The female replaces the male.
When feeding very small chicks, woodpeckers climb into the hollow with their heads.
The female brought food.
Male at the nest
The male takes dust and sawdust out of the nest
yummy
See you in Elk Island.
Medium-sized woodpecker (slightly larger than a starling). It has only three toes on its feet. The general color tone is dark. There is no red color in the plumage. The cap in males is golden yellow, in females it is whitish or gray-haired. The sides of the head and the back of the head are black. A white stripe runs from the eye, merging with the white field on the back of the neck. A second white stripe runs parallel to the first from the corners of the mouth and under the eye; from below it is limited by black "mustache". From the neck along the back there is a wide white field, sometimes with black spots. The rest of the back is black. The belly is dirty white with transverse black streaks, especially noticeable on the sides of the body. In young birds, these streaks are thicker. Forechest with longitudinal dark strokes. The undertail is white or mottled white. The flight feathers are black with white spots on the outer webs. Inner flight feathers with large oval white spots. The rudders are black, but the 3 outer pairs have white transverse stripes. Legs gray or lead grey. The beak is dark horn, blackish at the end. The lower jaw is colored lighter. The iris is bluish-white or pearlescent. Male weight 63-69 g, female 51-59 g. Body length (both sexes) 23-25 cm, wingspan 37-43 cm.
Inhabits large deaf massifs of coniferous and mixed forests of the northern type. Prefers a forest stand dominated by spruce, pure spruce forests, spruce-pine and spruce-deciduous forests. Especially loves shady, damp, sometimes swampy areas, often settles in floodplains. Not less than favorable conditions finds on burned areas, where there is a lot of dry forest, on old clearings with numerous stumps and deadwood. Characteristic nesting biotopes in Poozerye are moist coniferous and mixed forests of the taiga type, especially in floodplains and on the outskirts of marshes. In southwestern Belarus, it inhabits dark coniferous and pine forests along the edges of swamps, black alder forests, mixed forests with dead trees. Prefers pure spruce forests, spruce-pine and spruce-deciduous forests.
The area of the pair's nesting area in Poozerye ranges from 10 to 30 ha. The highest nesting density (0.10-0.15 pairs/km²) was noted in mossy and sphagnum plantations (Rossony district).
The mating games of the three-toed woodpecker begin in the third decade of March - the first decade of April. However, the first signs marital behavior are noted already in February, when males show increased motor activity, scream excitedly and emit drumming, which subsides only by the end of May. The construction of hollows coincides with the period of intense current.
Pairs are formed in late March - early April, but individual pairs have been observed since autumn. Breeds in separate pairs. Nests are arranged in hollows, which are hollowed out in rotten or dry trunks, high stumps of spruces, less often pines and other trees. The height of the hollow is usually low, 2-5 m, sometimes below 1 m and, as an exception (in other parts of Europe), 15 or even up to 20 m. , which gouges in pines, birches, aspens, alders and stumps at a height of 0.7–6 m (average 3.6 m). Nesting in hollows in living trees is not typical: only one case of nesting in the last year's hollow of Dendrocopos major, made in a damp-growing aspen, is known in Poozerie.
Letok is rounded. At the bottom of the hollow happens significant amount wood dust (a layer up to 5-6 cm thick), on which the eggs are located. Notch diameter 4.0-5.2 cm, hollow depth 26-30 cm, width in the middle part 10-13 cm. Nest tree trunk diameter at the hollow level 14-32 cm (average 27 cm).
The usual clutch consists of 4-5 eggs, occasionally only 3 or 6-7. The shell is pure white, shiny. Egg weight 4.6-5.4, average 5.1±0.2 g, length 23.5-26.3 mm, diameter 18.0-19.6 mm (average 24.9x18.8 mm).
The bird starts laying eggs in the first half of May and even later. One brood per year. The male and female incubate for 14-15 days; the chicks leave the nest at the age of 24 days. In Lakeland, chicks hatch in last days May and in the first decade of June. Departure of young from hollows occurs, as a rule, in the second half of June. Embryonic mortality is 14.3%, postembryonic 8.3%. For south-western Belarus, other dates for the departure of chicks are indicated - the end of June - the beginning of July.
After the breakup of the broods at the end of June, the molt begins, which proceeds during August and September. Broods at first keep together, in the third decade of July in southwestern Belarus the young are already kept alone.
The migrations of young and adult three-toed woodpeckers in the autumn-winter period within large forests are clearly expressed and are well confirmed by mapping of encounters. The radius of winter migrations noticeably increases, especially in the first half of winter. Nomadic birds are more often observed in copses, forest edges and overgrown clearings.
It feeds on xylophagous insects, it is especially useful for the destruction of bark beetles. It is estimated that in a short winter day, a three-toed woodpecker is able to peel off the dead bark from a shrunken old spruce and eat up to 10,000 bark beetle larvae. In addition, stem pests, caterpillars of various butterflies, hymenoptera insects, and spiders are harvested. Food is usually obtained close to the nest. Having found a tree damaged by pests, woodpeckers process it for several days in a row.
In autumn and winter, birds feed on insects living under the bark or in wood, they get them by chiselling. In winter, in addition to insects, it eats a small amount of spruce seeds.
The number of the three-toed woodpecker in Belarus is stable, estimated at 3-5 thousand pairs. The data of counting the number at stations in Poozerye during the nesting period indicate its significant interannual fluctuations: from 0.2 pairs per 1 km² to complete absence, which indicates the variability of nesting sites.
The species has been included in the Red Book of Belarus since 1981.
The maximum registered age in Europe is 9 years 3 months.