The Silent Forest: Help England’s Woodland Birds
We all know the familiar drumming sound of a woodpecker against the tree. England has three species, which is why it’s so important to protect our forests.
All wild birds, their nests and eggs are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. So don’t chop down trees, and keep dogs on leads near nesting sites, and follow access rules.
Even dead wood is useful to birds, as the rotten bark provides good hunting ground for food, and places for nests. And when birds abandon the nests after rearing chicks, the tree holes are often used by bats, owls and bees. Nature in balance.
Woodland birds rarely visit gardens. Learn how to create safe havens for garden birds, and how to stop birds flying into windows.
Great Spotted Woodpecker (big and bold!)
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is the one most people meet first. It’s medium-sized, black and white, with a bright red patch under the tail. Males show a red patch on the back of the head, while juveniles can have more red on the crown, which can confuse beginners.
Look for it in broadleaf and mixed woodland, parks with mature trees, and larger gardens. It feeds on insects and larvae under bark, yet it also takes seeds. In winter it may even visit your garden.
Green Woodpecker (likes to eat ants)
If the Great Spotted is a tree bird, the Green Woodpecker is a grass bird with wings. It looks larger than the Great Spotted, with a green body, a yellow rump that flashes as it flies, and red on the crown. The face looks pale, with a darker area around the eye that can read as a “mask” at distance.
Its favourite places in England include woodland edges, orchards, churchyards and cemeteries, golf courses, and any patch of rough or short grass rich in ants. They also eat larvae. They have ‘yaffle calls’ that roll out across open space.
The green woodpecker flies like a madman up and down, up and down. And when he’s not banging that beak away at a tree, he’s calling loud with his piercing ‘yaffle laugh. So what makes him such an extrovert?
Maybe it’s the extra long tongue he hides in his beak? Apparently it can stretch the length of his body to reach bores, beetles and weevils. Personally I think he’s be more at home with a can of lager and a kebab! Matt Sewell
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (tiny and shy)
England’s smallest woodpecker is black and white, with a ladder-like pattern on the back. The bill looks short. Males have a red crown. Instead of clinging to big trunks in full view, it often works high in the canopy, picking along thin branches where small insects hide.
Seek it in older deciduous woodland, wet woodland, old orchards, and places with dead wood and ageing trees. That last point isn’t romantic, it’s practical. Dead wood holds insects, and insects feed woodpeckers.
Its drumming is softer and faster than the Great Spotted woodpecker, and you may only catch a short burst before silence returns.
English Beech Trees (adored by woodpeckers!)
Silver birch trees are one of England’s most beautiful plants, and can thrive in cold climates, and also support over 300 insect species, making them vital for ecosystem. They grow fast but don’t live as long as many other trees. Although they are often the first trees to recolonise land after disturbances (like glaciers or wildfires).
Lesser-spotter woodpeckers love these trees to nest in. And the trees’ deep roots help other plants to grow, when they drop their leaves.
Silver birch tree sap contains xylitol (the same lethal sap found in some chocolate, chewing gum and toothpaste?) So if have a a tree-licking dog, keep well away! Read more on pet-friendly gardens.
Step into an English wood and you’ll feel it at once. Light breaks through branches in pale sheets, the air smells of damp bark, and leaf litter shifts under your boots like paper. Then, before you spot a single feather, you hear it: a sharp call from the hazel, a far-off laugh from a tit flock, a steady tap on a dead limb.
These woodland birds in England aren’t only the ones deep in the trees. A woodland bird is any species that feeds, nests, or shelters in the wood’s layered rooms: the canopy, the understorey, and the ground. Woods matter because they offer all three at once, plus old holes, deadwood, and quiet corners.
Our Woodland Birds is a lovely illustrated guide to meet more of England’s woodland birds, taking us into forests to meet them all! Even if you don’t see them, woodland birds are having a fabulous time amid the trees! They rely on mature trees and dead wood, reasons why it’s important to save our forests.
Even ‘dead trees’ are not really dead, as rotten bark provides good hunting ground for food (and a place for nests). And when birds abandon them after rearing chicks, the tree holes are often used by bats, owls and bees.
The birds featured in this book include:
- Goldfinch
- Bullfinch
- Crested tit
- Long-tailed tit
- Hobby
- Merlin
- Common buzzard
- Sparrowhawk
- Nuthatch and Treecreeper
- Wryneck
- Lesser-spotted woodpecker
- Pheasant & Golden pheasant
- Black grouse
- Goldeneye
- Moorhen
- Woodcock
- Whinchat
- Cirl bunting
- Woodlark
- Tree pipit
- Blue throat
- Black redstart
- Ring ouzel
- Fieldfare
- Waxwing
- Spotted flycatcher
- Great grey & red-backed shrike
- Tawny owls
- Jay
- Nutcracker
- Jackdaw
- Rookery
- Hooded crow
- Magpies
- Blue tit
- Redpoll
- Golden oriole
- Stock dove
- Black caps
- Heron
- Barn owl
- Robin
Some woods are now so deathly quiet that you could hear a pine needle drop. This is often due to the planting of fast-growing and often non-native pine and conifer trees.
They might be perfect for timber production and cash turnover, but not for our birds who need the insects, nesting places and ecosystems that thrive in mixed and broad-leaf forests.
Our once insect-rich summers are now a thing of the past, due to pesticides and intensive farming practices.
Matt Sewell is a talented artist and ornithologist, who has written several best-selling books on birds and other wildlife. His designs for birds are even on stamps sold on the Isle of Man.
Robins and wrens (small birds, big voices)
A robin often sings from an open perch, chest forward, as if it owns the path. Its song sounds sweet and flowing, with short phrases and pauses. Robins also follow gardeners and walkers because we disturb insects and worms. We turn the ground; they take the chance.
The wren is different. It’s tiny, brown, and round, with a cocked tail. It moves like a mouse through tangles, then suddenly fires out a loud, rapid song. If you hear a big sound from deep brambles, suspect a wren.
Blue, great and coal tits (woodland acrobats)
Blue tit is the bright one, with blue cap and wings and a yellow underside. Its call often sounds like a quick, thin “tsee-tsee”. Great tit is larger, with a black head and bib and a strong yellow chest. Many people remember its simple two-note phrase, like “teacher-teacher”.
Coal tit is smaller and more subtle. Look for the pale wing bar and the neat black cap. It often keeps to conifers at the woodland edge, but it mixes with others too.
Nuthatches and treecreepers
Nuthatch looks sturdy and confident, with a blue-grey back and a rusty belly. It can walk down a trunk as easily as up, which feels almost wrong the first time you see it. It also stores food, wedging seeds into bark crevices like a careful accountant.
Treecreeper, by contrast, is a master of disguise. It’s mottled brown, almost the colour of lichen. It usually starts low and spirals up the trunk, probing cracks with its curved bill. Then it flits to the base of the next tree and begins again. If you lose it, you’ve learned the point: camouflage is a woodland skill.
The curious cuckoo bird
The Curious Life of the Cuckoo Bird is a book about one of our most secretive birds. Is there any creature more mysterious? Often heard but rarely seen, it’s gentle call heralds the birth of sprint, and uplifts our wintered hearts, with the two-note ‘cuk-koo’ as it sounds in the country.
Often mistaken for a sharp-winged hawk, John Lewis-Stempel explains one of nature’s greatest enigmas in vivid and lyrical prose.
The common cuckoo is a slim, grey bird with a long tail and a restless look. People often hear it long before they see it, because it keeps to woodland edges, scrub, heath, and farmland with trees. It doesn’t usually sit out in the open like a crow. It slips between branches, then calls again from a different perch.
The classic two-note cuckoo song is mostly the male’s call. He uses it to claim space and to attract a mate. It’s bold, repetitive, and carries well over open farmland and across woodland rides, because the notes are clear and spaced.
Females sound different. Instead of “cuck-oo”, they give a bubbling, chuckling call, often described as a “kwik-kwik-kwik”. If you only listen for the two-note phrase, you’ll miss half the story.
In colour, a cuckoo looks grey above and pale below, with fine dark barring. It’s about the size of a pigeon, but slimmer. That shape can trick you at first glance. Many people confuse a flying cuckoo with a sparrowhawk, because both have long tails and barred underparts.
The difference is in the details: a sparrowhawk has shorter wings and a more punchy, hunting flight. A cuckoo looks lighter and more even in its wingbeats.
Where cuckoos spend the rest of the year
Cuckoos are summer visitors in the UK and much of Europe. They arrive in spring after travelling from wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa. When they first return, males call often, because they’re setting up territories and seeking mates.
Then something surprises many walkers: the sound drops away. By early summer, cuckoos can go quiet, and adults may leave earlier than you’d expect. You might still hear one later on, but the loud, regular calling is mostly a spring feature.
Timing also shifts. A warm spell can bring earlier arrivals. A cold snap can delay them, or keep birds quiet for days. That changeability matters, because it reminds us the cuckoo’s calendar is tied to weather, insects, and the wider health of the countryside.
Cuckoos let other birds raise their chicks!
Uniquely, cuckoos don’t build nests. They don’t sit for weeks feeding a brood of their own. They lay eggs in another bird’s nest, and leave the hard work to strangers!
First, a female cuckoo watches. She scouts likely host nests, often in scrub, reeds, or rough grass. In the UK, hosts can include reed warblers, meadow pipits, and dunnocks, depending on habitat. She needs the timing to be right, because an egg laid too early or too late stands out.
Next comes the quick move. When the host parents are away, the cuckoo drops into the nest, lays an egg fast, and often removes one host egg. The whole visit can take seconds. Speed matters, because longer visits raise the risk of being caught.
Then there’s disguise. Many cuckoo eggs mimic the host’s eggs in colour and pattern. Different female cuckoos tend to specialise in different host species, so their eggs match that host more closely. It’s a quiet arms race, played out in speckles and shades.
What happens after the chick hatches?
The cuckoo chick often hatches early. That head start is everything. In the first days, the chick may push other eggs, or even young chicks, out of the nest. The action looks brutal, yet it’s not a tantrum. It’s instinct, and it secures the only resource that matters: food.
After that, the foster parents keep feeding it. Why? Because the chick’s begging is overwhelming. It opens a wide mouth, calls insistently, and triggers the parents’ strongest feeding rules. The signals are hard to ignore, even when the chick grows far larger than the adults bringing food.
This has a cost. Host birds can lose their own brood for that season. Some fight back by rejecting odd-looking eggs, deserting suspect nests, or mobbing adult cuckoos nearby. The struggle goes both ways, and that balance is part of what keeps the system from collapsing.
Cuckoos eat large insects, including hairy caterpillars that many birds avoid. That diet links them to rough edges, mixed woodland, heath, and places where insects thrive. They also depend on healthy numbers of host species. No hosts, no cuckoo chicks.
When land use strips out hedgerows, drains wetlands, or turns varied ground into a single crop, insect life can fall. When insect life falls, birds feel it. As a result, hearing cuckoos is not just pleasant, it hints at a countryside with working parts.
In some areas, cuckoo numbers have fallen. Pressures include loss of wetlands and rough grassland, fewer insect-rich edges, pesticide impacts on large insects (including caterpillars), and climate shifts that can upset timing between cuckoos, hosts, and peak insect food.
The helpful part is that small actions add up:
- Plant native hedges and wildflowers to boost insects.
- Leave some grass long, and cut on rotation where you can.
- Reduce pesticide use, especially in spring and early summer.
- Support local wetland and grassland projects.
- Record sightings with local bird groups or citizen science apps.
Jays forgetful, help to plant oak trees!
Blue is one of the rarest colours in nature. Less than one in ten plants are blue. And even less percentage for birds and other wildlife. Blue fruits and vegetables don’t really exist (the anthocyanin compound with health benefits in blueberries and blackberries is actually purple).
Jays are one of England’s most exotic-looking birds. In fact, you may do a double-take, when you first see a bright blue wing patch, as it’s so unusual in this part of the world. Their feathers are actually brown, the ‘blue’ is due to the scattering of light (a bit like polar bears, who have translucent, rather than white fur).
The other way to easily recognise jay birds, is because they have black moustaches! One of England’s species of crows, jays are ‘noisy chatterboxes’ that you may hear screeching in the park, but are unlikely to see. As they often hide away.
What’s important (and quite funny) about jays, is that they are very forgetful. So they hunt for acorns, then store them away, often forget where they put some of them. So are almost single-handedly responsible for many of England’s beautiful oak trees!
Oak trees (and acorns) are unsafe near pets, horse and livestock, so keep them well away.
Jays also eat fruits, beetles and caterpillars (which is why we must protect butterfly habitats). They can mimic calls of other birds, to deter predators.
All UK crows are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Report concerns to Crimestoppers Wildlife Crime (anonymous).
- Although jays are more likely to visit woodland, keep cats indoors at dawn and dusk (when birds are likely feeding) and avoid wooden bird feeders (cats can claw up them).
Blue is one of nature’s rarest colours. Let’s look at other ‘blues’ on earth!
