West Tempar Telegraph Pole

The secret life of a telegraph pole.

You may look at this telegraph pole and think - ordinary, if not downright ugly. Why did they not design it as a tree? There are two bird species that don’t seem to be hung up on aesthetics - the mistle thrush and the great spotted woodpecker. The mistle thrush likes to sing from the top, no matter what the weather. It sings early in the year and is sometimes known as the ‘Storm Cock’ (although not by me). Several great spotted woodpeckers, sometimes known as pied woodpeckers (although not by me) use it as a staging post to our bird feeders. They may alight halfway up, clinging on in a very woodpeckerish kind of way with weight taken on the tail or the may go to the top. If they go to the top and the mistle thrush is in mid operatic song all hell breaks loose. You don’t mess with a mistle thrush that is half way through an aria and get away with it. In a a transformation the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde would have recognised the mistle thrush switches from melody to madness and threatens with a death rattle. The great spotted woodpeckers are nervous when it comes to humans (who wouldn’t be, look at the mess we are making) but are no pushover when challenged for a staging post. The threat and counter threat have no clear winners except perhaps for the observer. The woodpeckers have perhaps staked a claim by drilling a small hole about a foot down from the top. Other itinerant ‘perchers’ on the summit include a pair of house sparrows, blackbird, swallow, meadow pipit, pied wagtail and chaffinches.

Now we have a Nuthatch as a regular visitor to the bird feeders. It prizes a peanut out of the feeder using its powerful beak and then flies to the telegraph pole to eat it.

A buzzard has deigned to perch upon the summit to survey its domain.

The moral of the tale (tail?) is never underestimate a telegraph pole, especially when it has Craig Varr behind it. (6th April 2020)