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Garden birds

Cardinal Woodpecker

Dendropicos fuscescens

Cardinal Woodpecker 🔍 Enlarge
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Here all year

What it sounds like

A soft, fast drumming on a dead branch, and a sharp krrek-krrek. You hear it before you see it. A neighbour described exactly that.

JMK, CC BY-SA 3.0

How to recognise it

Our smallest woodpecker, roughly sparrow-sized, working its way up trunks and thin branches in short hops. Streaked underneath, barred on the back. The male has a red patch on the back of the head; the female's is black. Pairs stay together and call to each other as they forage.

Seen in Manor Gardens

Nobody has logged a Cardinal Woodpecker here yet. If you spot one, you will be the first on the record.

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