ON WINDY days, birds do not sing or call very much, and the woods can be very silent, with only the cackle of a magpie and the song of an occasional persistent robin to be heard. But there are often tapping sounds, which reveal a bird at work if they are followed up.
Great spotted woodpeckers in the treetops peck vigorously at decaying branches to get at beetles under the bark, and the loud tapping sounds carry a long way. These woodpeckers have strong claws, and will sometimes hang upside down under a branch to get at a particularly promising spot.
Any day now, they will also start drumming on dead wood — but this is a spring mating and territorial call, not connected with feeding, and is like the song of other birds.
Nuthatches regularly wedge nuts in a crack in the bark, and hammer at them with their beak to crack them open, while sometimes a tapping sound leads one to a marsh tit, now quite an uncommon bird in Britain. It is energetically seeking insects in rotting tree-trunks, or retrieving seeds that it has hidden, for it is a great hoarder.
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DJM