Showing posts with label great spotted woodpecker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label great spotted woodpecker. Show all posts

Saturday, 22 November 2014

Woodpecker and Sparrowhawk encounter

Autumn leaves going from gold to brown

The single note call of a Great Spotted Woodpecker cuts through the quiet of the winter woodland, I don't bother to lift my binoculars but scan for the bird with my eyes. As I do so I pick up on a fast moving form sliding with barely a wing beat through the tangle of bare branches in the canopy, its broad winged arrow coalesces before me as a monochrome winter silhouette, its small size and shape give it away as a male Sparrowhawk that, no sooner have I identified it, than it has gone, down the slope weaving its way through the tops of the trees. The Woodpecker stops calling and the wood falls quiet again.