This weekend...listen out for drummers

'Knock, knock. '

'Who's there?'

'Great spotted woodpecker.'

'Great spotted woodpecker who?'

If you're now expecting an hilarious punchline, I'm afraid you're out of luck - I'm no comedienne.

But if you listen out this weekend, you might just hear the knocking of a great spotted woodpecker.

Rather than singing about it, these smart looking birds like nothing better than to tap out their claim on a territory. And they can be pretty noisy about it, too - their rat-a-tat-tating can be heard for miles around.

As their name would suggest they often drum on wood, but occasionally they find things that make an even better noise!

Helping humans

Watching these birds in action is turly remarkable. And fascinating. To get some idea of the force these birds exert when 'head banging', it would be like you or I hitting a wall face-first at up to 20mph. Not something I'd like to try!

Even though we're still not a 100% clear how they manage this feat wihout causing themselves serious damage, a paper published last year shed a better light on how they do it.

The findings could even be used to help design better head protection for us!

Get spotting

For our friends in Ireland, I'm sorry to say that you'll just have to make do with listening to their drumming on our website as there are only a few woodpeckers in your neck of the woods.

For the rest of you - do keep an ear out and let us know if you spot one of these beautiful black and white birds this weekend.

And if anyone can actually finish the joke, be my guest and leave me a comment!