Jerzy Michalczuk
Ornis Polonica 2014, 55: 149–161
https://doi.org/10.12657/ornis.2014.3.0
Abstract: The Syrian Woodpecker has been colonizing SE Europe for more than 100 years. It has already colonized SE Poland, but northern and western Poland are still outside its regular range. Frequent nesting at the edge of stable breeding population range and incidental cases of breeding far away from its regular breeding range show that the Syrian Woodpecker expansion may be explained by a diffusion and scattered colony model. However, unsuccessful cases of establishing local populations distant from a regular breeding range suggest that there are some ecological barriers limiting adaptation capacity of this synanthropic species. The Syrian Woodpecker expansion rate slowed down at the beginning of the 21st century. Nowadays the Syrian Woodpecker west distribution range spreads out from West Poland across the central region of the Czech Republic up to the eastern part of Austria and Slovenia. It may have resulted from the population decline and lower number of immigrants supplying edge populations from the source population in the SE Poland. Currently, the colonization of new areas proceeds dynamically in eastern Europe, mainly in Russia.
Keywords: colonization, Dendrocopos syriacus, expansion, Syrian Woodpecker, woodpeckers
