pileated woodpecker – The Morning Porch/Patio

Tuesday April 30, 2019

Dave Bonta April 30, 2019

Gray and cool. The first hummingbird zooms past. A pileated woodpecker flies in to hammer the old butternut stump, keeping a wary eye on me.

Dave Bonta February 14, 2019 1

Bright and cold. Echoing off the ice, the back-and-forth love notes of pileated woodpeckers bashing their heads against dead tree limbs.

Dave Bonta January 27, 2019 2

Trees at the woods’ edge with their branches out to catch all the light they can—or in this case, snow. A pileated woodpecker’s flaming cap.

Dave Bonta January 13, 2019

Woodpeckers big and small are tapping on trees without disturbing the snow on every branch. Hibernating insects will never hear the knock.

Dave Bonta January 11, 2019 2

A new addition to the forest’s ensemble of creaks. The drumming of two pileated woodpeckers a quarter mile apart, fast as machine gun fire.

Dave Bonta January 5, 2019 1

Staccato sounds: the distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker, a white-breasted nuthatch’s agitated call, rain tapping on the roof. Again.

Dave Bonta April 21, 2018 2

Latticework below the porch has been pushed out, presumably by something that lives under the house. A pileated woodpecker’s mad laughter.

Dave Bonta March 7, 2018

Pileated woodpecker drumming in a snowstorm—so loud, so outrageously red—here and gone. While the wet, methodical snow doesn’t miss a twig.

Dave Bonta January 17, 2018

Mid-morning and the trees are starting to shed their latest coat of snow. A pileated woodpecker, too, comes loose, and flaps off cackling.

Dave Bonta December 15, 2017

A cold gray day. Juncos forage on the road and in the yard where a deer has dug. The dull knocks of a pileated woodpecker trepanning an oak.