Leaden sky. The hollow echoes with the drumming of pileated woodpeckers. Two soon stop, but the one with the most resonant tree bangs on.
pileated woodpecker
1/8/2021
A pileated woodpecker banging its head, crows denouncing a raven, a chicken cheering for her latest egg… the local dinosaurs are restless.
5/14/2020
Pileated woodpecker threading the trees: black and white wings slow as an old film flicker behind the pink and green pixels of new leaves.
3/5/2020
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.
2/20/2020
Palefaced sky with its one glowing orifice. The woodpeckers are busy with surgeries, removing delicious infestations from limb after limb.
2/12/2020
Sunlight filtered through thin clouds looks somehow warmer than it is. Silence embellished by the resonant knocks of a pileated woodpecker.
1/5/2020
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.
12/8/2019
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.
11/21/2019
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.
11/18/2019
The damp silence inside a cloud, broken only by a pileated woodpecker’s muffled tapping and the distant caw of a crow.
4/30/2019
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.
2/14/2019
Bright and cold. Echoing off the ice, the back-and-forth love notes of pileated woodpeckers bashing their heads against dead tree limbs.
1/27/2019
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.
1/13/2019
Woodpeckers big and small are tapping on trees without disturbing the snow on every branch. Hibernating insects will never hear the knock.