Warm rain. The hollow echoes with pileated woodpecker drumming and the REEP, REEP calls of great-crested flycatchers. In the yard, an American redstart is singing one of his least forgettable songs.
pileated woodpecker
May 3, 2025
Rain. The endlessness of red-eyed vireo song. A drumming pileated woodpecker switches to a higher octave.
April 27, 2025
The sun climbs through blossoming oaks whispery with wind. Pileated woodpeckers exchange volleys of thunder. A downy woodpecker rattles like a beggar with a cup.
March 9, 2025
Clear and still, despite the madness of clocks losing an hour. Woodpecker drums. A squirrel rummaging through last year’s leaves.
March 3, 2025
A red dawn. The talking drums of pileated woodpeckers: one bass, one snare. A white-throated sparrow falters half-way through his song.
February 22, 2025
The sun! A robin answers the Carolina wren as a pileated woodpecker hammers away at a hollow black walnut tree.
February 6, 2025
The ground is white with sleet and graupel, and there’s a shimmer of rain from a sky like gray wool. A pileated woodpecker bursts out of the woods, cackling maniacally.
December 18, 2024
Sunrise past, thin clouds spread across the sky as if leaking from the flat-tire moon. The pileated woodpeckers are loud with what sounds like antagonism but could simply be joy.
December 12, 2024
Bitter cold. A few small clouds turn brick-red. When the wind drops, there’s a staccato burst of pileated woodpecker alarm, answered only by a nuthatch.
November 18, 2024
Moonlight at dawn, only to cloud over by sunrise. A pileated woodpecker flies in a tight circle among the trees, as if lost, before launching himself out into the yard.
October 24, 2024
Clear at dawn. A pileated woodpecker rockets silently through the thinning forest canopy, and lands on the side of an oak like the angel of death for carpenter ants, elegant black-and-white wings folding shut.
October 16, 2024
Overcast and gloomy. A single scarlet bough glows like a stoplight in the dark woods. The distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker.
August 12, 2024
Clear and cold, with sun in the treetops. A pileated woodpecker in the yard lets loose with a cackle, prompting an immediate reply from off in the distance.
May 18, 2024
Rain and fog shut out all sounds from the valley; a gobbling turkey and a pair of pileated woodpeckers are the loudest things. A titmouse sheltering in the lilac shakes the rain from his wings.