Gray mid-morning, and the sound of bells comes and goes on the wind. A downy woodpecker telegraphs his hunger from a limb of the big maple.

A downy woodpecker plays a dead locust limb like a marimba, moving rapidly from pitch to pitch, a tremor of red against the blue sky.

The sun peeks out for half a minute from under a lid of clouds. The downy woodpecker finds a resonant bone of locust and rattles it hard.