A woodpecker takes lunch on the patio

Sandy, Bedfordshire: The bird crouched on the paving slabs with its head bowed, beak slightly open, its long tongue sliding down into an ant tunnel

One of nature's miners had come down to land on the garden patio, right in front of the kitchen window. Head cocked, the green woodpecker appraised the world as if to say: "Surely some mistake?"

Our sense of a bird out of place was reinforced by its stance, or rather its squat, for it seemed to be suffering from a collapsed suspension. Its rump sagged on the ground, tail feathers braced hard against the hard standing, pressed back just a little. Its toes appeared clamped to the concrete as if to a horizontal tree trunk. They were splayed out flat, two to the front, two to the back.

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