Kitchen Garden Forum

Recently decided to give our garden seat a treat, with a liberal dosing of teak oil. Woke up at 6am to the sound of our local woodpecker going hammer and tongs pecking two holes in one arm of the seat! Never done it before so can only assume it was the oil that attracted it, but it hasn't done it again.

Maybe the wood was still a little sticky and it had a few flies stuck on there?

Afternoon John, i can't think of a single reason why the woodpecker would have done that.....

Maybe he wanted revenge for something.

While on the subject of woodpeckers, we have a large number of lesser spotted and also green woodpeckers around here at the moment. Lovely to see......

I can't think of a reason why your woodpecker should have attacked the bench, John, but I do envy you your lesser spotted and green woodpecker, OH. We used to have the latter but a few years ago it 'disappeared', though it still breeds in another part of the village. And our nearest lesser spotted woodpeckers are not too far away on the Bolton Abbey estate in Wharfedale, but even there the numbers have declined.

Apropos declining numbers: our butterfly count this year is terrible even though the buddleias are in full bloom as well as all the other nectar rich flowers which we grow especially for insects. We can't blame agricultural sprays here because there are no arable farms whatsoever, it's all sheep and cattle. Very few midges about at night and no daddy-longlegs! What is happening?

We've had good numbers of butterflies recently, 54 the morning I did the count, mainly large, small and green veined whites plus 16 gate keepers, a few commas some Meadow browns and two small tortoiseshell. There was also a Red Admiral yesterday, and it has been wonderful for moths. I've planted scented nectar rich flowers and have areas with food plants for several different species so I'm sure this helps. There have been far fewer Peacocks and Small tortoises than usual though, no Burnet moths, skippers, small copper or blues, so an odd year as you say.

The same thing happened to our mates in spain they live behind us in a log cabin he coated it in preservative next morning he was suprised to find it bieng attacked by around 6 woodpeckers he finnished up having to tie old cds on string lines to frighten them off

Maybe thenoil is seen as the woodpeckers Anti ageing cream to keep their beaks shiny and unwrinkled!

I wonder if it makes any bugs that are already in the wood, a little more active....