14 March 2025 (woodpecker drumming)

woodpecker drumming . . .

a metal sap bucket

marks each maple

19 November 2022 (woodpecker)

a woodpecker

ascends a sapling . . .

morning rituals

7 January 2022 (snow day)

snow day

the plow spooks a woodpecker

from the suet

9 October 2021 (falcon)

hunting falcon

a red-headed woodpecker

loses its head

16 April 2021 (sapsucker)

the sporadic tapping

of a sapsucker

spring snow showers

8 March 2020 (sap moon)

sap moon

on the sugar shack roof

a woodpecker drums

February 17: Come in!

Roused from our coffee

by friendly knocking--

woodpecker on suet.

 

Posted with Blogsy

January 5: For winter

Woodpecker holes from summer

filled now with squirrel's stash:

seven acorns.

Posted with Blogsy

May 1: May Day

May Day, or Beltane--the pagan holiday celebrating the fertility of the verdant earth. This morning a Red-bellied Woodpecker was chirring repeatedly in the yard while I ate breakfast. Now a flicker's staccato whinny, cardinal's sputtering, and always the titmouse's incessant, loud whistles. The lawn greens in this vernal sunlight, bulbs bloom, buds swell. So much going on out there right now, the "season for loving."

Woodpecker calling
with uplifting urgency:
May Day! I need you!

September 18: Harvest

At a friend's farm: tomato vines laden with reddening globes, tight corn cobs sprouting tassles, peppers painted red and green by ripening, pumpkins swelling on the vines, here and there bodies of butternut squashes tan mounds upon the ground, young chickens pecking Japanese beetles in the sunlit yard, a woodpecker spiraling the trunk of the dying pine struck by lightning, and a broad-winged hawk silently passing over the chickadee on the branch...

Garden pregnant
with rounded bodies of squash.
Ripening: sun passing overhead.

August 31:Three Woodpeckers

On my way to work this morning, I spotted a pair of pileated woodpeckers flying to a tree in the neighbor's yard. They landed on opposite sides of the trunk simultaneously, one slightly above the other.  Pileated woodpeckers have a strong, year-round pair bond, and I smiled to see them, thinking that perhaps they were re-bonding after finally having kicked out this summer's youngs.

When I got out of my car at work, I heard a pileated woodpecker calling from one of the trees nearby. My office is in the same neighborhood as my house. The woodpecker I heard couldn't have been one of the pair I just saw, and yet it would undoubtedly be in their territory--pileated woodpeckers have large territories of 200 acres or more. I wondered if perhaps it was a youngster, on its own but not ready yet to wander too far from its nesting site.

Periodically throughout the day I heard what was probably this same woodpecker calling--that crazy, Woody Woodpecker laugh. I couldn't help but think that it was yelling because it was annoyed at being ignored by its parents, who were out on a day's date at the other end of the neighborhood.

Woodpecker couple:
strengthening their pair bond now
that the young have fledged.