Anja Murray: The return of woodpeckers is a cause for celebration
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Last week a friend with a workshop in Wicklow told me they heard a woodpecker thrumming on a tree nearby. I had understood woodpeckers only do this drumming during spring and summer, when prospecting for a mate, claiming territory, and when making a new nest hole. Evidently, I was wrong. Woodpeckers, the percussionists of the bird world, are happy to tap out a rhythm at any time of year, even, occasionally, in the heart of winter.
Woodpeckers are still a novelty here in Ireland. The great spotted woodpecker was likely common across Ireland once — it was referred to in early Irish medieval poetry. As woodlands were cleared for agriculture and iron smelting, woodpeckers would have found themselves increasingly homeless and hungry. It is thought they probably became extinct as a breeding species during the 17th or 18th centuries.
Extensive woodland clearances would have impacted other species too, the less charismatic creatures whose demise went unnoticed: an unknowable array of birds, butterflies, moths, and small invertebrates for whom there were no records.
Because ecosystems are highly interconnected webs of life, with each species connected to many others in a myriad of interdependencies, the impact of woodpeckers going extinct here would have been significant. Bats, for example, utilise the tree holes woodpeckers make to roost in. Lots of birds will nest in the abandoned nest holes of woodpeckers too. For this reason, woodpeckers are considered a keystone species in deciduous woodlands.
For this same reason an ecologist I know was exploring the idea of reintroducing woodpeckers to Ireland in the early noughties. The motivation was as much for Ireland's dwindling population of cavity roosting bats as for woodpeckers. The Irish Wildlife Trust carried out an assessment of the feasibility of reintroduction, and it was deemed that deciduous woodlands were sufficient to support a successful reintroduction. Occasional visitors from Scandinavia had been recorded, but no signs of them settling in to breed. Great spotted woodpeckers were just a rare visitor to Ireland during the 20th Century.
Then in 2004, things began to change. Greater spotted woodpeckers were sighted in the North, and the first confirmed instance of breeding on the island of Ireland in the modern period came from County Down in 2006, before sightings further south began.
In 2008, a juvenile was seen on a garden feeder in Wicklow. Because a young woodpecker couldn’t possibly fly all the way here from Britain so soon after fledging, this was a sure indication that great spotted woodpeckers had begun to breed in Wicklow.
A growing group of interested individuals began searching systematically, confirming several breeding pairs across the woods of County Wicklow in the following years. Genetic analysis of feathers, extracted from breeding holes after the brood had fledged, revealed that the new arrivals were related to Welsh woodpeckers. There, the expansion of new native woodlands has been offering plenty of opportunities for Woodpeckers, so much so that some pioneering individuals ventured west across the Irish Sea in search of new territory.
Over the next decade, recorded sightings document their spread across Ireland. The first records from County Limerick were confirmed in 2020 and in County Kerry in 2021. In the past three years, the have reestablished in the border counties of Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim, and Fermanagh. The most recent data from the Birds of Ireland dataset, published by the National Biodiversity Data Centre, confirms that, as of 2023, sightings of great spotted woodpecker have been submitted for all Irish counties — except Mayo. [This does not mean great spotted woodpeckers are absent from Mayo, just that no observations from the county have been recorded yet]
Great spotted woodpeckers are a stunning and distinctive-looking bird. Bedecked in black and white feathers and a scarlet undertail, there is no mistaking them for anything else. Rows of polka dots on their wings are what have earned them the ‘greater spotted’ part of their name.
Not only are great spotted woodpeckers a handsome bird, their physiology is impressive and unique too. More than 200 distinct woodpecker species exist worldwide. Much of their anatomy has evolved for chiselling into trees. They climb with agility, using their feet to cling to the bark. Strong tail feathers press down against the trunk, helping steady them as they get stuck into the job of pecking. Their skull is fitted with shock absorbers, in the form of special air pockets in the skull bones that cushion the brain from the impact of hammering. A long tongue allows them probe between the crevices of bark, from where they extract grubs, beetles and other insects to eat.
Woodpeckers drum with their beaks not only to excavate nest holes in tree trunks, but also as a way of communicating. Great spotted woodpeckers have a distinctive high-pitched call, but mostly they tap on tree trunks to say what it is they must say. To make the sound resonate and travel well through their woodland habitat, the ideal tapping tree is well-seasoned standing dead wood. If you’re keen to know if there are woodpeckers in the woods, you’ll likely hear them before you see one. If you do observe a woodpecker, be sure to submit your sighting to Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal, where it will contribute to documenting this remarkable spread across Ireland.
Overall, biodiversity data across Ireland reveals repeated cases of species spiralling into decline. More than two-thirds of Ireland's birds are now red- or amber-listed as birds of conservation concern; and several species are facing extinction here in the near future.
In this context, the return of woodpeckers is a cause for celebration. True to their exceptional nature, woodpeckers' remarkable spread gives us a glimpse into the potential for ecological recovery, a nudge to remind us that when woodlands return, their wild residents are often able to recover lost ground too.