Not the bird box guest intended, but welcome all the same

YOU can never tell what will make its home in a nest box. I have come across blue tits in a dormouse box, a particularly nimble toad in a bird box halfway up a tree, and bats roosting in an owl box.

Following repairs to slates hung on one side of my house this summer I put up a selection of bird boxes designed for sparrows and swifts, which will hopefully be used to rear the next generation come the spring breeding season.

I also bought a special starling bird box, which has a larger entrance hole. A pair nested under the roof earlier this year, so I fixed the box close by ready to welcome them again, given they are a species in decline and need all the help they can get.

Only, I should have hung a sign over the entrance reading: Reserved for starlings.

It seems another bird noticed the vacant and waterproof dwelling and decided to move in early.

I heard it a couple of days ago – a tapping sound early in the morning reverberating in the box.

Some birds do like to fuss with their accommodation, and I have had great tits tapping away inside bird boxes before, so assumed it was the same.

Yesterday I heard the tapping again and popped my head around the rear door to look up at the box, which hangs beside the upstairs bathroom window, and saw a face peering down at me from the entrance hole.

A black and white face with a sharp pointy beak. It wasn’t at all what I expected, but certainly made for a pleasant surprise: a great-spotted woodpecker.

I’m guessing it is using the box as a sheltered place to roost at night, especially during the recent wet weather.

But it might also claim it as a place to raise young in the spring, which would be fascinating.

They are certainly handsome and charismatic birds. Bird boxes designed specifically for woodpeckers tend to be narrow and far deeper than my RSPB starling box. In which case my tenant woodpecker, tap-tapping away, may have been trying to hack down through the bottom in the hope it could enlarge the cavity. In which case it will find itself disappointed, simply creating a draughty hole in the floor. I shall see what transpires if this characterful carpenter sticks around.