The lesser spotted woodpecker was listed by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Picus minor.

[3] A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2015 based on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences found that the species placed in the genus Dendrocopos did not form a monophyletic group.

[4] In the revised generic classification, the lesser spotted woodpecker was placed in the resurrected genus Dryobates,[5][6] that had originally been introduced by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie in 1826.

Its note is a repeated "keek", loud for so small a bird, and its vibrating rattle can with experience be distinguished from that of the larger species.

When hunting for wood-boring larvae it chips away at the rotten wood, and the litter at the foot of a tree is often the first indication that insects are attacking upper branches.

From autumn to spring it hunts mainly on wood-living insect larvae, frequently from thin dead branches in living trees.

Five to eight highly polished white eggs are laid upon wood dust and chips in the latter half of May, and a single brood is the rule.

The British Ornithology Trust blamed modern habits of removing dead trees quickly from parks and woodland, depriving the birds of the decaying wood which is their favoured nesting habitat.