pileated woodpecker

Sunday January 13, 2019

Dave Bonta January 13, 2019 0

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.

Dave Bonta November 17, 2017

Cold and quiet. An argument between nuthatches is picked up and amplified by a pileated woodpecker. The old dog farts in a patch of sun.

Dave Bonta October 18, 2017 1

The builder leaves but hammering continues—a pileated woodpecker. Two chipmunks poke their heads out on either side of a rock in the wall.

Dave Bonta April 28, 2017

‪The bud-burst woods is a backlit canvas of pointillist green. A pileated woodpecker hops down a log, her scarlet crest flashing as she taps.‬