The joy of spotting a rare visitor at the feeder

EXCITING news from a neighbour — he phoned to describe an unusual bird on his peanut feeder.

I thought I knew what it was, but before I found the time to get over there I got another call. He’d managed to photograph it through the window.

It wasn’t a great picture, but it confirmed my identification. It was a greater spotted woodpecker, an adult female. These birds started to recolonise Ireland two or three years ago, having been extinct for at least two centuries. I wrote an article about it on this page, last year. The first reports were from Wicklow, then more followed from other counties, in the east and north, including visits to peanut feeders in suburban gardens in south Dublin.