Whenever we reach the bottom of this hill, Sitka spruce plantation on one side, hawthorn, alder and willow woodland on the other, the bird call app on my phone detects great spotted woodpeckers nearby. We seldom see them. They have a talent for hiding behind tree trunks when there are people around. What usually follows can often be a game of hide-and-seek, unless I’m with an accomplice who walks around the tree and bamboozles the bird into breaking cover.
But this hungry bird, approaching with characteristic woodpecker-riding-a-rollercoaster undulating flight, had no such inhibitions. She was carrying a spruce cone in her beak and landed in full view, on the trunk of a sallow. Then she wedged the cone into a hole she had already excavated, using that as a vice while she chiselled out the seeds. Later we found scores of discarded, hacked-about Sitka cones under her workbench.
