WOODPECKERS OF EUROPE

Author: Gerard Gorman
Format: Hardback
No. of Pages: 176pp.
Release Date: July 2004
ISBN Number:
1-872842-05-4

Order this book at NHBS.

Woodpeckers are sufficiently widespread for most people to have seen them, but scarce enough for our encounters to be touched by a sense of occasion. Throw in their graphic colours, specialised lifestyle and atmospheric drumming (vocalisationns) and you have the basis of the bird's long-standing appeal. No surprise, then that Europe's woodpeckers have already been exclusively covered. So is there really scope for this new study? Having trawled withrelish through this informative and beautifully illustrated title, I would answer yes.

This is a bird book that stands firmly outside the modern tradition in ornithological writing, which is characterised by an overwhelming and, arguably tedious fixation with the bird's appearance. Instead the author demonstrates a passionate interest in the whole creature and has written, in effect, a biography for each of the Continent's ten species, covering in detail their habitat, preferences, and foraging techniques, breeding behaviour and, unusually, the signs and holes that they leave behind.

The author is an Englishman living in Budapest. He speaks several European languages, which has given him access to the very latest Continental research. But it is not just the depth of expertise that shines through - it is his enthusiasm for woodpeckers simply as living creatures. The text is packed with all sorts of quirky , personalised observations, such as the fact that Great Spotted Woodpeckers drum on street lamps, the better to broadcast their presence: that Green Woodpeckers have an amazingly long tongue that canturn corners inside a beetle's burrow: and the fact that the Black Woodpecker is the only European bird that can excavate cavities in the timber of living trees.

It may come at a rather high price for a slim volume, but this is a superb book and it is also a testimony to what an amateur can achieve with a good deal of patience, an understanding family and a healthy dose of obsession.

Mark Cocker (BBC Wildlife Magazine)

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