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I hear a tap, tap, tap, but who is doing the tapping?

Sandy, Bedfordshire: The sound had the exact tone of a beak on wood and I guessed this was a nuthatch hammering a nut or seed into a crevice
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Country Diary : Nuthatch (sitta europaea)
A nuthatch (Sitta europaea). Photograph: Alamy

The tap, tap, tapping began just as I passed the biggest sweet chestnut in the wood. I was looking down at the time, noticing how autumn had been pounded into winter. The tramp of countless feet had already pressed the chestnut's leaves into pulp. Though completely flattened, they had preserved their jagged outlines. Newly fallen leaves showed fine ribs and curly edges, awaiting their turn.

The sound came again, each blow a tick of a tap, a light, precise strike. It had the exact tone of a beak on wood and I guessed this was a nuthatch hammering a nut or seed into a crevice, provisioning for winter. As if in jubilant confirmation, one called pwooee, pwooee from a little way into the wood. My eyes began to climb the tree, my body swaying this way and that to snake around the trunk and catch sight of the bird. Another round of taps came from somewhere out to the left – maybe from the next tree?

I was standing beneath the neighbouring chestnut, fingertips touching the trunk, when a nuthatch called high up. But a split second later, too quickly for it to be the same bird, the tapping started up once more. Now it appeared to originate from some laurel bushes between the chestnuts. There was a gap, an entrance to the laurel bower. I stepped inside and could see two small birds flitting among the branches above. One was unmistakably a blue tit, giving a chirruping one song fits all. The other was a great tit. It landed on a thick branch above my head. I saw the end of its tail poking out of one side of the branch and its head out of the other. The bird's beak rose and fell purposefully, striking the wood – "tap, tap, tap!"

A wise birdwatcher once coined a saying that if you hear a bird call in a wood that you don't recognise, it will be a great tit. It seems the puzzle can be extended to percussion. But what was the bird doing?

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