Early this morning the terrier and I left the footpath on the top of the hill, squeezed under the barbed wire and crossed a fairway of the golf course to slip through a patch of gorse. A whirr of wings, two flashes of red - startling against the brilliant green of their backs - and a pair of woodpeckers shot away like bright missiles without the birds' usual distinctive call of alarm to alert other wild ones. They'd been only yards from my feet, possibly feeding on ants, although I'd never seen two together before and wondered if I'd disturbed a tryst.

As always when something natural yet unusual concerning birds happens, I began to think of augury and how important the behaviour and movements of birds were to country people in times gone by. We now know that many of the things that they noticed and had been taught by their elders have a scientific basis and can impart information about the weather; the arrival and departure of the swallows and other migratory birds, the timing of mating and nest building to name just two, but augury has since been consigned to the realm of superstition.

Yet it's tempting and - dare I suggest it - natural to look for signs or messages in events of this kind. I think I've been doing it since childhood and have found a special sort of joy in seeing the magical side of nature.

So when we arrived home I found my copy of The Gods had Wings by W.J. Brown, a nondescript little hardcover published in 1936, with woodcuts by John Farleigh. And guess what? I opened it right in the middle of Chapter Five: The Woodpecker...!

All three English woodpeckers have that conspicuous red crest, which connected them with with the deity to whom they were sacred; the Norse God Thor, the red-headed, the red-bearded, the thunderer. Thor was endowed with the attribute of lightning, and his magic hammer, Miolnir, was the mythological representation of the thunderbolt or lightning flash.

The woodpecker was identified by the ancients with the lightning, and his neat round hole driven straight into the trunk of a tree denoted the appearance of powers which only lightning (or Thor's magic hammer) possessed.

There's more - much more - in Chapter 5, but I always think of the woodpecker as 'the lightning bird'. In a good way.

The woodpeckers above are from the Page of Arrows card of the Greenwood Tarot - magical messengers, or perhaps messengers of magic...