There's
unfamiliar call in the treetops in Thornes Park, Wakefield. For once we
haven't brought our binoculars with us: it's so frustrating not to be
able to see the bird that's making a noise somewhat like the 'yaffle'
- the mad laugh of the of the green woodpecker - but higher-pitched and
a bit more continuous.
We
catch sight of the bird, in fact there's a pair of them, in the top branches
of a sycamore. From the silhouette we guess that it's a woodpecker but
a small one that we're not familiar with: the lesser spotted. We're wrong:
one of the birds flies down and now that we can see the colour it's obvious
that it's a nuthatch.
It
flies to a hole, a scar where a branch has broken off a mature beech
tree. There's a neat hole towards the bottom but most of the cavity is
filled with hardened mud which is stippled with beak-marks. At first I
think that this must be part of the tree or that the stipples are the
pores of a fungus. The filling blends in well.
There's
unfamiliar call in the treetops in Thornes Park, Wakefield. For once we
haven't brought our binoculars with us: it's so frustrating not to be
able to see the bird that's making a noise somewhat like the 'yaffle'
- the mad laugh of the of the green woodpecker - but higher-pitched and
a bit more continuous.
We
catch sight of the bird, in fact there's a pair of them, in the top branches
of a sycamore. From the silhouette we guess that it's a woodpecker but
a small one that we're not familiar with: the lesser spotted. We're wrong:
one of the birds flies down and now that we can see the colour it's obvious
that it's a nuthatch.
It
flies to a hole, a scar where a branch has broken off a mature beech
tree. There's a neat hole towards the bottom but most of the cavity is
filled with hardened mud which is stippled with beak-marks. At first I
think that this must be part of the tree or that the stipples are the
pores of a fungus. The filling blends in well.