The Syrian woodpecker (''Dendrocopos syriacus'') is a member of the

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. ...

family, the Picidae.

Taxonomy

The Syrian woodpecker was first described as ''Picus syriacus'' by

Wilhelm Hemprich Wilhelm Friedrich Hemprich (24 June 1796 – 30 June 1825) was a German naturalist and explorer. Hemprich was born in Glatz (Kłodzko), Prussian Silesia, and studied medicine at Breslau and Berlin. It was in Berlin that he became friends with ...

and

Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (19 April 1795 – 27 June 1876) was a German Natural history, naturalist, zoologist, comparative anatomist, geologist, and microscopy, microscopist. Ehrenberg was an Evangelicalism, evangelist and was considered to ...

in 1833, from a specimen collected on Mount Lebanon.

Distribution and habitat

The woodpecker is a resident breeding

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

from southeastern

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

east to

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. Its range has expanded further northwest into Europe in recent years. It is an inhabitant of open woodlands, cultivation with trees and scrubs, and parks, depending for food and nesting sites upon old trees. It is often an inconspicuous

, in spite of the plumage.

Description

The woodpecker is 23 cm long, and is very similar to the great spotted woodpecker, ''Dendrocopos major''. The upper parts of the male are glossy black, with a crimson spot on the nape and white on the forehead, sides of the face and neck. On the shoulder is a large white patch and the flight feathers are black with white spots forming three wingbars. The three outer tail feathers show only a few white spots; these show when the short stiff tail is outspread, acting as a support in climbing. The under parts are buffish white, the abdomen and under tail coverts reddish. The long bill is slate black and the legs greenish grey. The female has no crimson on the nape, and in the young this nape spot is absent, but the crown is crimson. It differs from the smaller

lesser spotted woodpecker The lesser spotted woodpecker (''Dryobates minor'') is a member of the woodpecker family Picidae. It was formerly assigned to the genus ''Dendrocopos'' (sometimes incorrectly spelt as ''Dendrocopus''). Some taxonomic authorities continue to list t ...

by the crimson on the abdomen and the white shoulder-patches. It is much harder to distinguish Syrian woodpecker from great spotted woodpecker. Syrian has a longer bill, has more white on the head, and lacks the white tail barring of great spotted.

Behaviour

Communication

When hidden by the foliage, the Syrian woodpecker's presence is often advertised by the mechanical drumming, a vibrating rattle, produced by the rapidly repeated blows of its strong bill upon a trunk or branch. This is not merely a

mating call A mating call is the auditory signal used by animals to attract mates. It can occur in males or females, but literature is abundantly favored toward researching mating calls in females. In addition, mating calls are often the subject of mate choic ...

or challenge, but a signal of either sex. It is audible from a great distance, depending on the wind and the condition of the wood, and a hollow bough naturally produces a louder note than living wood. The drumming is longer than great spotted woodpecker's, and decreases in volume. It is faster and shorter than the drumming of

white-backed woodpecker The white-backed woodpecker (''Dendrocopos leucotos'') is a Eurasian woodpecker belonging to the genus ''Dendrocopos''. Taxonomy The white-backed woodpecker was described by the German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein in 1802 under the ...

. The call is a sharp ''quit, quit'', softer than great spotted woodpecker, and something like

common redshank The common redshank or simply redshank (''Tringa totanus'') is a Eurasian wader in the large family Scolopacidae. Taxonomy The common redshank was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his ...

Feeding

The Syrian woodpecker's food mainly consists of those

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 which bore into the timber of forest trees, such as the

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...

e of wood boring

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

s and

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 ...

s. Additional prey includes bees such as '' Xylocopa pubescens''.Gerling, Dan, Paul David Hurd, and Abraham Hefetz. Comparative behavioral biology of two Middle East species of carpenter bees (Xylocopa Latreille)(Hymenoptera: Apoidea). Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983. The woodpecker usually alights on the trunk, working upwards. During the ascent it taps the bark, breaking off fragments, but often extracts its prey from crevices with the tip of its sticky tongue. Seeds,

nut Nut often refers to: * Nut (fruit), fruit composed of a hard shell and a seed, or a collective noun for dry and edible fruits or seeds * Nut (hardware), fastener used with a bolt Nut or Nuts may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Co ...

s and berries are eaten when insect food is scarce. Its actions are jerky, and it hops rather than climbs, leaping forward with one foot just in advance of the other. Usually feeding in a vertically 'heads-up" positio

it is not uncommon for the woodpecker to assume a vertically or horizontally upside-down attitude while probing a tree for food. When a space is crossed the flight is easy and undulating.

Breeding

The neat, round 5 cm diameter nesting hole, is bored in soft or decaying wood horizontally for a few inches, then perpendicularly down. At the bottom of the shaft, a small chamber is excavated, where up to 11 creamy white eggs are laid on wood chips. The hole is rarely used again, but not infrequently other holes are bored in the same tree. Almost any tree sufficiently rotten is used. The young, when the parents are feeding them, cluster at the mouth of the hole and keep a continuous chatter, but when alarmed slip back into the hole.

References

* Gorman, Gerard (2004): Woodpeckers of Europe: A Study of the European Picidae. Bruce Coleman, UK. . {{Taxonbar, from=Q752481 Dendrocopos, Syrian woodpecker Birds of Europe Birds of Western Asia Birds of the Middle East Syrian woodpecker Taxa named by Wilhelm Hemprich Taxa named by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg