Drizzle thinning into wind-blown mist by mid-morning. The sky brightens. A pileated woodpecker clings to a skinny locust tree as it sways in the breeze, taps a few times and then tilts her head to the side as if listening for a response.
pileated woodpecker
Overcast and cool. A pileated woodpecker flies into the dead top of the tallest black locust in the yard, seemingly oblivious to a swirling conflict between a small flock of local jays and two migrant sharp-shinned hawks. A slow inspection of the treetop turns up nothing worth tapping for, and she flies off, leaving the tree to the jays.
Cold and clear at dawn. At one point a whippoorwill, screech owl and Carolina wren are all calling at the same time. The owl persists for another five minutes, trilling at the woods’ edge. Then a drumroll from a pileated woodpecker, and it is day.
Sun glistening in the treetops. Down-hollow, a pileated woodpecker drums on a baritone snag. The first bumblebee visits the jewelweed, no crickets to muffle the hum of her solitary motor.
An autumnal morning, heavily overcast and cool. The continuous trill of tree crickets counterbalances the stream’s trickle: two kinds of traffic. A pileated woodpecker cackles.
Overcast and cool. A rain shower comes rustling through the grass as a pileated woodpecker drums up on the ridge. I crush a mosquito, but not before she has bequeathed to me her itch.
Rain subsiding into mizzle by mid-morning. The distant thunder of a pileated woodpecker. A scarlet tanager sings quietly from the small trees below my mother’s sitting room.
Another perfect morning, the air still so clear I can follow the progress of sunlit gnats on the other side of the yard. A pileated woodpecker drums a quarter mile away. A vireo says “vireo” once and stops.
Clear at sunrise, the western ridge brick-red above a meadow full of fog. Sound is out of the east, so field sparrows are answered by quarry truck beepers, and a pileated woodpecker by the grinding of rocks.
Downy, hairy, red-bellied and pileated: all the woodpeckers for miles around are suddenly drumming, one after another, as the scattered clouds turn orange on a crisp, nearly frosty morning.
Thick fog at dawn, full of robin song and phoebe calls. Sunrise is signalled by little more than the growing thunder of pileated woodpeckers.
Crystal-clear sunrise, with a bluebird warbling by the barn. A downy woodpecker at the woods’ edge has found the perfect tenor-tuned snag to rattle, in response to a distant pileated woodpecker’s thunder.
Misty and gray, with endless commentary from crows. The sun appears for half a minute without coming fully out, as pileated woodpeckers cackle in the yard.
The gray supremacy of fog, filtering out the valley’s noise, leaving only the drumming of woodpeckers and the low rumble of a jet high overhead.