The Green Woodpecker is a reasonably widespread bird across a large part of Europe, although absent from many of the islands such as Ireland, Corsica, Sicily, it is present across Britain.  The British population is about 24,000 pairs.  It is found in woodland and in urban locations, particularly in parks and houses with large gardens.

The main food of Green Woodpeckers is ants, and it can often be seen on lawns digging and collecting them.  This also includes my back garden and the fields behind in Leicestershire.  

The Green woodpecker is the easiest of the woodpecker species to identify and can not be confused with any other British Woodpecker species. species.  It is about 33 cm long, In Europe it is similar in appearance to the Grey Headed Woodpecker with whom it may be confused.  Indeed occasionally the two species hybridizes.

As mentioned above - I am lucky to occasionally have Green Woodpeckers visit my garden, and the images below are taken from my garden.  It is only an occasional visitor and as such its hard to make any preperations for photography.  Its certainly a species that i would like to take more images off as opportunities arise.

Iberian Green Woodpecker

Over the years many species of birds are split into different species, renamed or sub species are split into seperate species.  Recently, the Iberian Green Woodpecker has split from the Green Woodpecker into a seperate species.

Iberian Green Woodpecker

The newly split species is found in Spain and Portugal, has a population of 250,000 to 450,000 pairs and is on the "red List" of endangered species.  At 31 - 33 cm in length it is the same size as the Green Woodpecker.  Its differing identification features are no (or very little) black on its head and a brown rather than white Iris.