The white-backed woodpecker is a Eurasian woodpecker belonging to the genus Dendrocopos.
Region
Eurasia
Typical Environment
Occurs patchily from parts of central and eastern Europe across southern Scandinavia and through Russia to Northeast Asia, including Korea and northern Japan. Strongly tied to mature deciduous and mixed forests with plentiful standing deadwood and fallen logs, especially beech, oak, ash, aspen, and alder. In Europe it is most frequent in old beech and oak forests; farther north and east it favors aspen-rich riverine and boreal fringe woodlands. Forestry practices that remove deadwood often fragment its distribution.
Altitude Range
Sea level to 2000 m
Climate Zone
Temperate
Ease of Keeping
Beginner friendly: 1/5
A specialist of old-growth deciduous and mixed forests, the white-backed woodpecker depends on abundant deadwood where it finds wood-boring beetle larvae. Its presence is often used as an indicator of high-quality, natural forest. It drums powerfully on resonant trunks and excavates fresh nest cavities each year, which later benefit many other hole-nesting species.
Temperament
solitary and territorial
Flight Pattern
undulating flight with short, stiff wingbeats
Social Behavior
Outside the breeding season it is mostly solitary, defending feeding territories in suitable forest patches. Pairs form in late winter or early spring and excavate a new cavity nest each year in decaying trunks. Clutch size is typically 3–5 eggs, and both sexes share incubation and chick-rearing duties.
Migratory Pattern
Resident
Song Description
Vocalizations include sharp, metallic 'kik' notes and harsher rattles. The primary display is a loud, rapid drum-roll lasting about a second on resonant deadwood, repeated at intervals, especially in spring.
Plumage
Boldly patterned black-and-white woodpecker with a conspicuous white back panel and strongly barred black-and-white wings and flanks. Underparts are whitish with dark streaking on the sides; undertail coverts are red. Males show a red crown patch; females have a black crown. Head has contrasting white supercilium and cheek with dark moustachial stripe.
Diet
Feeds mainly on larvae of wood-boring beetles, longhorn beetles, and carpenter ants extracted from decaying wood. It also takes other insects and their pupae found under bark and within rotten trunks. Seasonally it supplements its diet with berries, nuts, and seeds when insect prey is scarce.
Preferred Environment
Forages on dead or dying trees, large fallen logs, and decomposing stumps, often selecting stands with abundant coarse woody debris. Frequently probes and chisels into soft, decayed wood and occasionally gleans from bark surfaces.
