hickwall

• hickway

From Middle English hyghwhele; also highwale (1500s) or highawe (1600s). Rarely attested before the sixteenth century, making the original form difficult to trace. Probably imitative of the bird's cry; compare yaffle (“green woodpecker”). Possibly influenced by witwall, woodwall.

hickwall (plural hickwalls)

1. (UK, regional) A lesser spotted woodpecker (Dryobates minor).
2. (UK, regional) A European green woodpecker (Picus viridis).
   • 1975, Banbury Historical Society, Cake & Cockhorse, volume 6, page 126:

     […] at Shenington for example, the churchwardens paid 4d for each Hickwall (green woodpecker) killed, but there is no record of any payment for weasels, which were worth 3d at Bodicote. One would like to know if Hickwalls were rare at Bodicote and weasels at Shenington, or if in fact they were not considered to be vermin in these parishes.

3. (UK, regional, archaic) A blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus.
   • 1861, John Christopher Atkinson, British Birds' Eggs and Nests, Popularly Described, page 43:

     Tomtit, Blue Tomtit, Nun, Blue-cap, Blue-bonnet, Billy-biter, Hickwall, Blue Mope. One of the most impudent of an impudent lot.

• “hickwall”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

• wallhick