pileated woodpecker – The Morning Porch/Patio

Thursday March 05, 2020

Dave Bonta March 5, 2020 2

Her shadow draws my eye to the pileated woodpecker flying as silently as a pickpocket’s hand from one trunk to the next. A flash of crimson.

Dave Bonta February 20, 2020

Palefaced sky with its one glowing orifice. The woodpeckers are busy with surgeries, removing delicious infestations from limb after limb.

Dave Bonta February 12, 2020

Sunlight filtered through thin clouds looks somehow warmer than it is. Silence embellished by the resonant knocks of a pileated woodpecker.

Dave Bonta January 5, 2020 1

Snowflakes in the air give shape to the wind. I sneeze, and a pileated woodpecker emerges from the far side of an oak and flies off.

Dave Bonta December 8, 2019

Soft light on the hard frost: more glimmer than glitter. A pileated woodpecker’s kak kak kak like a high-pitched engine trying to start.

Dave Bonta November 21, 2019

A hollow, rasping grunt: either a raven or a buck in rut. The pileated woodpecker cackling in flight falls silent as soon as she lands.

Dave Bonta November 18, 2019

The damp silence inside a cloud, broken only by a pileated woodpecker’s muffled tapping and the distant caw of a crow.

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.