Woodpecker and fir cones (1 Viewer)

[gerald762]

Today I saw a Greater spotted woodpecker carry a fir cone to a maple tree. There it proceeded to peck at it for 10-15 minutes. There cannot have been enough insects in the cone to last that long so I assume that it was eating the seeds in the cone.
Is this normal?

 

[Xenospiza]

Yes, this is common behaviour. Fir and pine seeds are an important food source for Great Spotted Woodpeckers.
They can have preferred locations to hack away, called anvils:

Pine Cones Below Anvil

A pile of opened pine cones below the anvil, or workshop, of a Great Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos major . Favourite anvils are repeatedly ...

woodpeckersofeurope.blogspot.com

 

[gerald762]

That explains the amount of fir cones under the maple tree!! I had always assumed that woodpeckers ate grubs only. One never stops learning!

 

[Michael Billerbeck]

Yep, they jam the pine cones into crevices in branches.
Here you can see a Greater Spotted Woodpecker having at least three fir cones jammed into the crevices of a branch in a row:

In German we call it "Spechtschmiede" ("Woodpecker's Forge")

 

[gerald762]

Thank you for that video. During the last few days a pair of Great spotted woodpeckers have come to my bird table. They pick up sunflower seeds that have fallen onto the lawn and then they walk up the bird table post and put the seeds into a crack in the post, where they eat them,

 

[Jon Turner]

I remember seeing this behaviour in the Southern Netherlands where I was living in the late 1960's. Squirrels pull the cones apart from the base while Woodpeckers go in from the tip.

 

[gerald762]

Here is a photo of a woodpecker carrying a sunflower up a post in my garden