GSW - Great Spotted Woodpecker

It is almost exactly 4.4 km (as the gannet flies) from my Shetland house to the nearest RSPB reserve at Sumburgh Head. It is 1.6 km further (as the red kite flies?) from my Oxford house to Otmoor, the nearest RSPB reserve.

When I'm on Shetland I go to Sumburgh Head most days, sometimes twice, even on occasions three times. Although I spend more time in Oxford, I probably only go to Otmoor once or twice a year. Shocking. But today was one of the visits.

And I was rewarded with woodpecker, chaffinch, blue tit, great tit, long tail tit, moorhen, coot, common tern, mallard, crested grebe, little egret, heron, red kite, misc geese, ringed plover, lapwing, mute swan, not to mention lots of butterflies and dragon flies.

This juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker (unless someone wants to try and persuade me that it's a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker) was working hard on the feeders. He would spend ages trying to extract an entire peanut from the cage and disappear into the bushes, before reappearing to repeat the exercise a few minutes later.

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