Its distribution also stretches across large parts of the central and Eastern Palaearctic, all the way to the Pacific Ocean and south to the Himalaya and the Malay Peninsula.

It prefers deciduous forest with a high proportion of dead trees, feeding primarily on ants, although not being as exclusively dependent on this group as the green woodpecker.

[1] The grey-headed woodpecker was formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788 in the 13th edition of the Systema Naturae under the current binomial name Picus canus.

[4] Gmelin based his description on the "grey-headed green woodpecker" that had been described and illustrated in 1747 by the English naturalist George Edwards.

[6][7] The eight subspecies with a black nape are treated as a separate species black-naped woodpecker (Picus guerini) by some authorities, including the IUCN; as a group, they occur in the southeast of the range, from central China south to the Malay Peninsula and southwest to the Himalaya.

Their plumage more closely resembles grey-headed woodpeckers, but with a red parting on the head, a reddish nape and a brighter iris,[11] while some were conspicuous for their darker colour.

[14] The widely distributed Picus canus jessoensis is very similar to the nominate subspecies but is slightly greyer and less green.

The Chinese subspecies Picus canus guerini has a black nape patch and a greenish underbody.

Grey-headed woodpeckers have uniformly olive green upperparts, transitioning across the neck to a light grey, the head being that latter colour.

A single kuek may also be a predator warning, as begging nestlings will immediately fall silent if this call is made by either parent.

Grey-headed woodpeckers often use metal covers on masts and roofs as drumming substrate due to their favourable resonance characteristics.

The species is absent from the North German Plain, British Isles, Iberian Peninsula, and Mediterranean islands.

[21] Nonetheless, ants and their immatures make up the great bulk of the grey-headed woodpecker's diet, particularly in spring and summer.

[1] Besides those, caterpillars, crickets, bark and wood beetle larvae, flies, spiders and lice are part of the diet.

In late autumn and early winter, grey-headed woodpeckers switch to including significant amounts of vegetable matter, such as berries and other fruits, in their diets on a regular basis.

[23] The observation of stable or slightly increasing populations in Europe may, however, be based solely on greater effort in recording the species.