Very easy to recognize, more often heard than seen: its powerful laughter has a wide range and it is not easily seen, often feeding on the grass of the same color than its plumage.
The male differs from the female by a small detail: the area under the eye and the beak - which is called the "whiskers" - is red, while it is black in the female.
Both sexes emit "laughter", which does not have a singing role but rather a contact call. In woodpeckers, the equivalent of the song is emitted by hammering at high speed against a tree trunk with its bill at a rate of 15 to 20 beats per second per second: it is drumming. Drumming is less common in Eurasian Green Woodpecker than in other woodpeckers, and generally occurs between January and March.
It also uses its beak to dig a hole in a tree that will serve as a nest: his "nest cavity". The Green Woodpecker is less a forest-specialist than other species of Woodpeckers. Its spends a lot of time on the ground looking for ants, which it can hunt deep in the ground, thanks to its 10 cm long tongue! The rest of the time, this cumbersome tongue is wrapped around its skull.