The three-toed woodpecker is called Eurasian Three-toed Woodpecker in English. It is a small bird with 8 subspecies.
The three-toed woodpecker is a typical forest bird. Except for the breeding season, it often acts alone. In the late breeding period, it also forms a family group. It is active in the middle and upper parts of the forest, and sometimes it also moves and forages on the ground. It is lively, agile, and pecks quickly and forcefully. It feeds mostly on dead branches. It rarely sings at ordinary times. Its call during the breeding season is similar to the monosyllabic "ga-ga-ga" of the spotted woodpecker, but it is lower and hoarse than that of the spotted woodpecker. It mainly feeds on various insects such as longhorn beetle adults and larvae, click beetles, coleoptera adults and lepidoptera larvae, and formicidae adults. Sometimes it also eats plant seeds, especially pine nuts, especially in the winter when food is scarce.
The breeding season of the three-toed woodpecker is from May to July. They start to form pairs and show courtship behavior in April, and start to build nests in early May. They build nests in tree holes, which are pecked by male and female parents. They usually choose broad-leaved trees with rotten heartwood or dead standing trees. They do not use old nests, and they peck the nest holes again every year. Each nest hole takes about 15 days to peck. The hole is round with a diameter of 4-5 cm, an inner diameter of 6-14 cm, a depth of 20-30 cm, and a height of 2-8 meters from the ground. Each nest lays 3.6 eggs, usually 4-5 eggs. The eggs are white and 21-28 mm × 16-19 mm in size. The male and female take turns incubating the eggs, and the incubation period is 14 days. The chicks mature late.
The three-toed woodpecker has a wide distribution range and is not close to the critical value of vulnerable and endangered species survival (distribution area or fluctuation range is less than 20,000 square kilometers, habitat quality, population size, and distribution area fragmentation), so it is evaluated as a species of least concern.
Listed in the "Red List of Threatened Species of the World Conservation Union" (IUCN) 2016 ver 3.1-Least Concern (LC).
Listed in the second level of China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021).
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