"There's a bird trapped in a manhole!"
This from a concerned visitor on a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon, hundreds of people about and a lot of traffic up and down the road. So off we went to investigate, three of us for mutual support, expecting to find a pheasant with its leg caught, or maybe a venturesome magpie. Something visible, at least. Instead, we found a worried-looking couple gazing hard at an inspection chamber (or rodding point, or manhole to you) with a solid steel cover. No distressed beaky creature anywhere in sight.
"He's inside, through the hole!"
Sure enough, a tiny hole, meant for the end of the lifting tool, less than an inch long and half that wide, briefly showed a quick fluttering movement and the flash of a bright beady eye. It took us about quarter of an hour and a range of implements, including a hook, a hammer and two crowbars, to break the rust around the edge and lift the lid a couple of centimetres. In the gloom, clinging to the dank wall at the back of the cavity, we could see a great tit, apparently frozen in fright. After a bit of gentle tapping and shooing, somebody sensible suggested standing back and giving it some peace. Which we did, and out it came, everything ok and off into the trees. So we put the cover back, jumped on it to seat it down firmly, congratulated each other and went for a cup of tea.
An hour later - "It's in the manhole again!"
This time, the lid came up without much effort. We stood back, waited a minute, and out came the bird, quite relaxed, stood and looked around, pecked a bit at a seed on the ground, then hopped up on the fence and calmly flew up into the tree again. So the manhole cover ended the afternoon with gaffer tape over its keyhole.
Now, had it been Troglodytes troglodytes, nobody would have been surprised....
Graham