• * * The Woodpecker's Chisel
A photograph has just been sent me which I took to be an illustration of a new bird box. It is a section of a post, pre- sumably creosoted, that carried a three-phase circuit of high• voltage. The post was erected in the Colchester area in 1930. The entrance hole is three inches in diameter, and the depth probably prepared for the nest, nine inches. This is the only post, out of several thousand, that is known to have been attacked in the Eastern Counties ; but readers- of The Spec- tator may remember accounts of similar damage to posts in Herefordshire. There quite a number were bored. It does not seem to be known whether the green or the greater spotted woodpecker is the carpenter responsible. One explanation was that the bird was seeking food, being deceived by the live buzzing of the current ! Others suggest that the damage is done by " drumming," undertaken purely for vocal pur- poses ; but the Colchester photographer makes it clear that a nesting hole was being burrowed ; and I should think that the green woodpecker was more likely to be concerned than the rarer, and more obvious, greater spotted.
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