Is this a first?

Sir, – While playing in a four-ball competition in Bray Golf Club on the second day of May, I was keeping half an eye open for swallows, and the other ear open for the cuckoo, in the hopes of beating my fellow birders to it with my is-this-a-record letter to The Irish Times.

Neither bird obliged.

But as we reached the tenth green we were alerted, indeed distracted, by the unmistakable rat-tat-tat-tat of a woodpecker on a nearby tree trunk. His strident pecking continued at irregular intervals during the 10 minutes we were in his company, and succeeded in putting my partner off his stroke during a crucial putt. But how encouraging to know that Woodie has come so far north in Wicklow. Next stop, the gardens of south county Dublin? – Yours, etc,

RODNEY DEVITT,

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Sandymount, Dublin 4.