Cloudy and damp, with long intervals between bird calls. A small woodpecker’s improbably loud rattle from the black locusts sets off a pair of Carolina wrens.
downy woodpecker
4/10/2024
Rainy and cool. An eastern towhee is urging me—according to the time-honored birders’ mnemonic—to drink my tea, while woodpeckers large and small bang their heads against the trees.
3/26/2024
Red spreading from the clouds to the western ridge. Robin, cardinal, phoebe: the early-spring trio, joined by a downy woodpecker on percussion with a high-pitched dead limb.
5/3/2023
For the third morning in a row, the thermometer hovers just above freezing as drizzle falls. Woodpeckers are already at work, beating their heads against trees.
4/14/2023
A lull in the morning chorus. Contrails of all ages litter the sky like a boneyard. A woodpecker’s fast rattle.
2/19/2023
It’s cold, gray and still, but the woodpeckers are living it up: pileateds hammering, red-bellieds whinnying, and a downy drumming his loudest.
2/15/2023
High clouds yellow with sunrise appear to have some business off to the east. A downy woodpecker on a dead locust limb fires off a blast beat.
12/25/2022
A fresh skin of snow on top of the crust and the deepest day-time silence of the year. I listen to the quiet tapping of a downy woodpecker halfway up the ridge.
7/9/2022
Rainbow at sunrise. A small woodpecker has found a very loud dead thing and is bashing his head against it for all he’s worth.
4/2/2022
Clouds that looked dark before sunrise are mottled with blue-gray and yellow. Woodpecker blast beats. Wrenish riffs.
3/19/2022
Humid and cool. The sun keeps finding new holes in the clouds. The woodpeckers keep drumming.
3/11/2022
Clear everywhere except where the sun rises pink, orange and yellow, heralded by small woodpeckers with loud, locust-wood drums.
1/28/2022
The first flakes, fine as flour, from a dull gray sky: far edge of the predicted blizzard. A silent crow flies over. A woodpecker knocks.
12/5/2021
A vast Sunday-morning silence broken only by mourning dove wings, the soft taps of a downy woodpecker, and the grumbling of my stomach.