To fledge or not to fledge (Great spotted woodpecker on club site)

On the Wirral Country Park caravan site, situated on a cliff above the Dee estuary, a small crowd gathers outside the utilities block to see what the racket is about.  A young child cries out and a three-legged golden retriever muffles her bark just as a bird flies off from a tree.

I didn’t recognise the bird – just a fleeting black – could have been a blackbird, but others in the group of bystanders reckoned it was a Great spotted woodpecker.  I’m not convinced. Then through a well-chiselled hole in the tree a small head pops out, like a bird in a Swiss cuckoo clock.  The chick sports a red cap. It’s beak releases a sharp ‘kek’ ‘kek’ sound. 

The parent repeatedly calls from a nearby tree - appearance now recognisable by a flash of crimson underbelly - though too distant for me to distinguish the difference between the female and male, with his red nape.

For two days the parent and chick converse in this way.  The parent doesn’t come any nearer and eventually disappears altogether, leaving the chick’s lone voice.

Later, all is quiet under the cover of darkness.  Either the parent woodpecker has given up hope and abandoned its offspring, or the chick realises it would have to leave the safety of the nest to find its own food from now on, despite inquisitive caravaners and their dogs, me, and a predatory magpie spying from a nearby tree.