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Great spotted woodpecker        Images © Mark A. Chappell

Great spotted woodpeckers are strikingly marked birds of European forests.   Like most woodpeckers, they announce their presence with loud drumming calls produced by hammering the bill against dead wood.   They are easy to find but hard to photograph, since they like to spend time high in the trees and seldom stop moving; the pictures were taken with a long lens near Bialowieza, Poland.

  • Canon 1D3, 800 mm lens + 1.4X converter, fill-in flash (2009)