This guy sat in my garden a few days ago. It’s the first time I saw this European green woodpecker here. In Dutch it’s called ‘groene specht’. They’re beautiful with the red feathers on their heads.

Especially the size of their tongue is remarkable, it’s about 10 cm long and used for eating ants. This one was picking in the ground and I’m sure it found some tasty ants. Ants are plenty to find in my garden. They also appear to eat other insects and small reptiles at times.

The bird itself is about 30-36cm big. The bird in the photo is a female. The little stripe underneath the eyes is black. A male has a red stripe.