Middle Spotted Woodpecker
The middle spotted woodpecker (Dendrocoptes medius) is a mainly European woodpecker belonging to the genus Dendrocoptes.
In Türkiye
Recorded in Türkiye throughout the year.
Most records in February, June–July and September.
Provinces where it makes up the largest share of bird records.
Adjusted for how many birdwatchers are out each month; the busiest month = 100%.
3,575 records from Türkiye · #201 of 634 species by number of records. Source: GBIF.org (October 2026). All birds of Türkiye
About
The middle spotted woodpecker was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Picus medius. The specific epithet is Latin for "intermediate". Linnaeus gave the locality as Europe, but this is now taken to be Sweden. For many years this woodpecker was usually placed in the genus Dendrocopos but a 2015 molecular phylogenetic study that compared nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences from pied woodpeckers found that Dendrocopos was polyphyletic. As part of the reorganisation to create monophyletic genera, the middle spotted woodpecker was one of three species that were placed in the resurrected genus Dendrocoptes. This genus had been described by the German ornithologists Jean Cabanis and Ferdinand Heine in 1863 with the middle spotted woodpecker as the type species.
Text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
At a glance
The middle spotted woodpecker is tied to old oak forests, gleaning insects from bark crevices rather than drumming, communicating by call.
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