Syrian Woodpecker - next round

Yesterday I was disappointed by the rather elusive Syrian Woodpecker near Kronach and furthermore annoyed, when I found out later on that the bird showed nicely only one hour after I had left. In the end I turned out to be the only one who didn´t see that woodpecker.

Reason enough to try it again. Today. Unlike yesterday the weather wasn´t nice at all, it was windy, cold, the light was very bad and later on it also rained a bit. Additionally I was the only birder there, since the last ones had left the site in the morning (which had also had very nice views of the bird). So I started where I had stopped yesterday, wandering through the streets and looking for that woodpecker. Once again it didn´t look good, not even one of the more common woodpecker-species was to be seen. I met several residents who all asked me, whether I had already found it. Finally a woman told me that, although there was yet no trace of the woodpecker, I should still look out, stay at one place and listen to the rather distinctive call.

With this new strategy I finally detected the calls of the hoped-for woodpecker and spotted it while it was flying to the small river nearby. I only needed these few seconds to exclude the rather similar Great Spotted Woodpecker and here we are: Syrian Woodpecker, tick. After that it was still calling for a few more minutes but wasn´t to be seen anymore.

So all in all still a happy ending, though I still wonder why all the other birders got so nice views and also managed some extraordinary shots like this one.