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philosophie Wrote:

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> There are parakeets AND woodpeckers! Got very

> excited about spotting a woodpecker at East

> Dulwich Station on Sunday. Because I'm a bit sad

> like that :-)



Caught a LB bound train at 12-ish today and could have sworn I heard a woodpecker in the trees between the platform and those houses around Dulwich Hamlet Fc - this post makes me think it really might have been...?

maxxi Wrote:

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> Caught a LB bound train at 12-ish today and could

> have sworn I heard a woodpecker in the trees

> between the platform and those houses around

> Dulwich Hamlet Fc - this post makes me think it

> really might have been...?


It'll have been a woodpecker, but probably one of the spotted woodpeckers (most likely lesser spotted), as they do more drumming. We've also, apparently, got greater spotted woodpeckers round here too, which do the same thing. And treecreepers, which are a sort of woodpecker that creep up trees, that don't.


The green ones make a noise like a mad horse, most like the noise that the little grebes make on the lake, except that the little grebes call falls in pitch as it goes on, and they live on the lake, which woodpeckers don't.


If all goes well, and the drumming works out, in a few weeks time we should start hearing the woodpecker chicks squeaking from inside holes in trees. Parrots do that too, but there's usually one of the adult parrots nearby, in which case it's not a woodpecker. I think that the parrot gets fed too, when the other adult returns, but I'm not sure. They do a bit of nose-rubbing before one of them vomits down the other's neck, so that might be more in the way of courtship. Not that there's any obvious distinction between courtship and being fed, except in the case of humans, and even then the two seem to be easily confused.

Green woodpeckers rely on ants as part of their diet. It is a good indicator that people are leaving the insects alone in orchards and in unmown lawns, especially.

I learnt yesterday that their unusually distinctive cry is known as 'yaffling'.

This is different from any other bird, including the green parakeet -

and some descriptions related to spotted woodpeckers, which you will probably notice drumming on tree bark.

pearl1 Wrote:

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> Are there any owls around here? I could swear I

> heard one along greendale a few nights back, but

> that's the first time in 17 years! Is it possible

> or am I imagining it?


It's not unheard of...

http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?20,639480,639763#msg-639763

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