European green woodpecker
Picus viridis
A medium-large green woodpecker with a red crown. Confirmed in Georgia as a year-round resident and breeder on the 2024 national bird checklist.
Overview
What is European green woodpecker
The European green woodpecker (Picus viridis) is a medium-large woodpecker (family Picidae) confirmed in Georgia as a year-round resident. The 2024 annotated checklist of the birds of Georgia codes it YR-R: a breeder present throughout the year. Seasonality is classed as high-quality (code A). Occurrence quality is high (H), with photographs and sound recordings. Adults are about 30–36 cm long at species level, olive-green above, with a yellow rump and a red crown. It is not a threat to people. IUCN lists the species as Least Concern. The 2024 checklist assigns the same category nationally.
Last updated
Gallery
European green woodpecker in photos
Photo: Charles J. Sharp
Kew Gardens ·
Photo: Charles J. Sharp
London ·
Photo: ზაური ხაჩიძე
Photo: ზაური ხაჩიძე
Photo: Alexis Lours
Franconville ·
Photo: Simon Mannweiler
Saarland ·
Photo: Skot
Prague ·
Identification
How to identify European green woodpecker
A large green woodpecker with a red crown, black mask, and yellow rump. In Georgia it is a year-round resident on the 2024 checklist. The usual confusion is grey-headed woodpecker, which lacks a full red crown.
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Length about 30–36 cm and wingspan about 45–51 cm at species level. NPLG gives wing 150–170 mm, tail 105–116 mm, and mass 185–250 g. The back is olive-green, the rump yellow, the underparts paler yellowish-green. The crown and nape are red in both sexes. A black patch surrounds the pale eye (a “mask”). The bill is straight and chisel-like, not conical.
- 02
The moustache (malar stripe) is the sex mark: red in the centre in adult males, all black in adult females. Juveniles are barred and spotted on the body and look scaly; they still show green tones and a red crown coming through. Iberian green woodpecker (Picus sharpei) has little or no black mask; it is a western European split and is not on the Georgian list.
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Grey-headed woodpecker (Picus canus) is also a year-round resident in Georgia on the 2024 checklist. It is greyer-headed, without a full red crown: the male has only a small red patch on the forehead; the female has none. Black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) is larger and black with a red crown (male) or red nape (female). Great spotted, Syrian, middle spotted, white-backed, and lesser spotted woodpeckers are pied black, white, and red — not olive-green. Eurasian wryneck is a small, cryptically brown picid and a breeding migrant, not a green resident. This atlas does not yet have separate pages for those species.
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It is not a threat to people. Leave it alone. A green bird on the ground in woodland-edge grassland in Georgia is more likely this species than a spotted woodpecker.
Biology
Habitat, diet, behavior, and conservation
Habitat and range
This page does not colour a municipality-by-municipality map. The 2024 checklist confirms country-level resident status but does not publish a regional gazetteer. Do not assume it occurs evenly across Georgia, including treeless high plateaus. Named survey evidence: Javakhishvili, Melikishvili and Metreveli (2022) recorded it at 15% of forest sampling points in Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park (80 points) and at 3.85% of points in Pshav-Khevsureti Protected Areas (26 points). In that study it preferred medium-density forest with openings and meadows. Species-level habitat is semi-open country: deciduous or mixed woodland, forest edge, floodplain woodland, orchards, parks, and nearby short grassland where ants nest. Closed high-density forest is less typical than for black woodpecker. A separate national elevation band for Georgia is not published here.
Diet
There is no separate Georgian diet study on this page. Across the range the main food is ants, especially Lasius and Formica, taken on the ground by probing nests and licking up adults and larvae. Other insects are taken. Occasional small vertebrates appear in species-level literature; that is not a measured Georgian menu. In the field, a large green woodpecker feeding on a lawn or meadow is behaving typically. Tree-trunk drilling for wood-boring larvae is much less the daily method than in spotted woodpeckers.
Behavior
It is active by day and is often heard before it is seen. The territorial call is a loud, laughing series of notes (the “yaffle”). Drumming on wood is infrequent compared with many other woodpeckers. Flight is undulating; the yellow rump is then obvious. It is shy and should not be handled. Nesting is in a cavity excavated in a tree. Species-level clutches are about four to six eggs, with incubation of about 19–20 days; those figures are from the wider range, not a Georgian nest sample on this page. The 2024 checklist treats the species as a breeder in Georgia. Call-count work in Borjomi-Kharagauli and Pshav-Khevsureti in late April–July recorded calling birds in the breeding season. It is resident and is not a long-distance migrant.
Conservation
BirdLife International assesses Picus viridis as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. EUNIS reports Least Concern at world, Europe, and EU scales. The 2024 Georgian bird checklist assigns global and national Red List category LC. A Georgia-specific population trend is not quantified on this page. The 2022 protected-area survey is a local snapshot, not a national monitoring series. EUNIS notes coverage under the EU Birds Directive and that Picidae are listed under the Bern Convention; those instruments are not Georgia’s Red List. Do not catch or keep wild birds. Loss of old trees and of ant-rich grassland would be the biologically relevant pressures at species level; local threat ranking for Georgia is not published here.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Short answers to the most important questions about European green woodpecker.
Yes. The 2024 annotated checklist of the birds of Georgia lists it as a confirmed year-round resident (YR-R): a breeder present throughout the year.
In woodland and forest edge with nearby grassland, where it feeds on ants. Named surveys recorded it in Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park (15% of 80 forest points) and, more rarely, in Pshav-Khevsureti Protected Areas (3.85% of 26 points). This page does not map every region.
Olive-green back, yellow rump, red crown, black mask around the eye. Males have a red-centred moustache; females have an all-black moustache. Grey-headed woodpecker lacks a full red crown.
About 30–36 cm long at species level, with a wingspan of about 45–51 cm. NPLG gives mass as 185–250 g. A separate measured series from Georgia is not given on this page.
Mainly ants, taken on the ground. Diet has not been studied separately in Georgia on this page.
All year, according to the 2024 checklist. It is not treated there as a passage migrant or winter-only visitor.
Yes. YR-R on the 2024 checklist means resident breeder. Calling birds were recorded in late April–July in the 2022 protected-area survey.
It is harmless. It is globally Least Concern and is coded LC nationally on the 2024 checklist. Do not catch wild birds.
- Budagashvili & Javakhishvili 2024 — The birds of Georgia (Sandgrouse 46)
- Javakhishvili, Melikishvili & Metreveli 2022 — Woodpecker monitoring in Borjomi-Kharagauli and Pshav-Khevsureti
- BirdLife DataZone — Eurasian Green Woodpecker
- EUNIS — Picus viridis
- IOC World Bird List
- Avibase — Georgia bird checklist
- NPLG Wiki Dictionaries — მწვანე კოდალა
- ქართული ენციკლოპედია — კოდალასებრნი
- RSPB — Green woodpecker
- Winkler & Christie 2020 — Birds of the World (Picus viridis)
- Wikimedia Commons — European green woodpecker male (Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikimedia Commons — European green woodpecker female (Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikimedia Commons — Green woodpecker Franconville (Alexis Lours, CC BY 4.0)
- Wikimedia Commons — Picus viridis Grünspecht (Simon Mannweiler, CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikimedia Commons — Žluna zelená, Praha (Skot, CC BY-SA 4.0)
- xeno-canto XC1139426 — Picus viridis (Walter Wallner, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Species profiles are compiled from peer-reviewed literature and established biodiversity databases, and are reviewed as new taxonomic and conservation data become available.
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