The Eurasian three-toed woodpecker (''Picoides tridactylus'') is a medium-sized

woodpecker Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. ...

that is found from northern Europe across northern Asia to Japan.

Taxonomy

The Eurasian three-toed woodpecker was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...

in the tenth edition of his '' Systema Naturae''. He coined the binomial name ''Picus tridactylus''. The type locality is Sweden. The specific epithet is from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

''tridaktulos'' meaning "three-toed" (''tri-'' is "three-" and ''daktulos'' is toe). The species is now placed in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

'' Picoides'' that was introduced by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799. The Eurasian three-toed woodpecker was formerly considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organis ...

with the American three-toed woodpecker (''Picoides dorsalis''). Eight subspecies are recognised: * ''P. t. tridactylus'' (Linnaeus, 1758) – northern Europe to the southern

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

and to south-eastern Siberia and north-eastern China * ''P. t. alpinus'' Brehm, CL, 1831 – central and south-eastern Europe to western Ukraine and Romania * ''P. t. crissoleucus'' ( Reichenbach, 1854) – northern Ural Mountains to eastern Siberia * ''P. t. albidior'' Stejneger, 1885 – eastern Siberia and

Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (russian: полуостров Камчатка, Poluostrov Kamchatka, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and w ...

* ''P. t. tianschanicus'' Buturlin, 1907 – eastern Kazakhstan and western China * ''P. t. kurodai'' Yamashina, 1930 – north-eastern China and North Korea * ''P. t. inouyei'' Yamashina, 1943 – Japan (

Hokkaido is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The lar ...

) * ''P. t. funebris'' Verreaux, J, 1871 – central China The subspecies ''P. t. funebris'' is sometimes treated as a separate species, the dark-bodied woodpecker.

Description

The Eurasian three-toed woodpecker is in length, just a little smaller than the great spotted woodpecker. The adult has black and white plumage except for the yellow crown of the male. Neither sex has any red feathers. It has black wings and rump, and white from the throat to the belly; the flanks are white with black bars. The back is white with black bars, and the tail is black with the white outer feathers barred with black. Juveniles of both sexes have a yellow crown. The voice call of the Eurasian three-toed woodpecker is a ''kik'' or ''chik'' The breeding habitat is coniferous forests across the Palearctic from Norway to Korea. There are also populations in the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Swi ...

and the Carpathian Mountains. Three-toed woodpeckers nest in a cavity in a dead conifer or sometimes a live tree or pole. The pair excavates a new nest each year. This bird is normally a permanent resident, but northern birds may move south and birds at high elevations may move to lower levels in winter. Three-toed woodpeckers forage on conifers in search of wood-boring

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

larvae or other

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s. They may also eat fruit and tree sap. These birds often move into areas with large numbers of insect-infested trees, often following a forest fire or flooding.

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