Woodpecker Insists the Knocking Is Just Checking Whether Anyone Is In

The residents of Orchard Close were woken at ten past six on Monday by what sounded like a very small builder testing a very large drum. It came from the chimney of number four. It came again on Tuesday, and on every morning since, eleven mornings in a row, always at roughly ten past six, in bursts of about two seconds, each followed by a pause just long enough to make everybody think it had finished.

The source is a great spotted woodpecker, black and white with a neat red patch under the tail, who has chosen the metal cap on top of the chimney as his favourite surface in the whole neighbourhood. Asked on Thursday to explain himself, he flew to a nearby birch, looked at the assembled householders for some time, and delivered a short statement. The knocking, he said, is not noise. It is a greeting. He is simply checking whether anyone is in.

Mr Dalby of number four has pointed out that everybody is in at ten past six, and that everybody is now also awake. The woodpecker accepts this. He notes, however, that nobody has actually answered, and that until somebody does he will have to keep knocking, as any polite visitor would. He added that the chimney cap has an excellent tone, much better than the birch, which he described as woolly, and far better than the gutter of number six, which he tried once and would not recommend.

A compromise was proposed on Friday, involving a hollow log fixed to the garden fence. The woodpecker inspected it carefully, tapped it twice and returned to the chimney, explaining that the log was a lovely gesture but that it sounded like a log. By Saturday a second woodpecker had been seen on the roof of number nine, apparently listening. The first woodpecker has declined to say whether this is connected, but his knocking has become noticeably louder and slightly faster.

Behind the joke is something woodpeckers really do. Spring drumming is not about food at all. Woodpeckers use it the way other birds use song: to announce that a patch is taken and to catch the attention of a possible mate. What matters is how far the sound carries, so they pick the most resonant thing they can find. In a wood that is a dry, hollow branch. In a town it is quite often a metal chimney cap, a gutter or a lamp post, which is why the drumming so often comes from the loudest object on the street, early in the morning.

Their heads are built for it, with a sturdy skull and a long tongue that wraps around the back of it, and the drumming usually quietens down once the pairs have settled. So if a woodpecker is knocking on your house at dawn, he is not trying to get in, and he is not trying to annoy you. He is telling the whole street, as clearly as he possibly can, that he lives here now, and hoping that the right someone is listening.