Dendrocoptes medius
Silhouette: Олена Гнезділова · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~60%
The middle spotted woodpecker (Dendrocoptes medius) is a mainly European woodpecker belonging to the genus Dendrocoptes. 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.
Four subspecies are recognised: Dendrocoptes medius medius (Linnaeus, 1758) – Europe to west Russia Dendrocoptes medius caucasicus Bianchi, 1905 – north Turkey through the Caucasus Dendrocoptes medius... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Białowieża National Park | 🇵🇱 Poland | |
| 2 | Plitvice Lakes National Park | 🇭🇷 Croatia | |
| 3 | Picos de Europa National Park | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 4 | Biebrza National Park | 🇵🇱 Poland | |
| 5 | Fertő-Hanság National Park | 🇭🇺 Hungary | |
| 6 | Gauja National Park | 🇱🇻 Latvia | |
| 7 | Pyrénées National Park | 🇫🇷 France | |
| 8 | Tatra National Park | 🇸🇰 Slovakia | |
| 9 | Bavarian Forest National Park | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 10 | Kiskunság National Park | 🇭🇺 Hungary |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Middle Spotted Woodpecker sighting in Moscow on a given day, based on 531 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 41st most-seen of the 171 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
October to March
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Middle Spotted Woodpecker in Moscow on a given day, against about 10% in April to September, the lowest months.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Middle Spotted Woodpecker sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
4th of 19
Of the 19 cities where we can rate Middle Spotted Woodpecker sightings, Moscow ranks 4th at about 10%. The best odds are in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia, about 20%), Kyiv (Ukraine, about 20%) and Vienna (Austria, about 10%).
Same family: Picidae
The closest relatives of the Middle Spotted Woodpecker that you can see in Moscow (family Picidae, Woodpeckers) are Great Spotted Woodpecker (about 50%), Black Woodpecker (about 10%) and White-backed Woodpecker (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Middle Spotted Woodpecker is recorded against all the birds logged in Moscow (531 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
