Cold but not freezing mizzle. Two pileated woodpeckers work the woods’ edge, tilting their heads to the side between taps. A flock of juncos.
pileated woodpecker
The lacework of branches against the sky, with the half moon high overhead. A pileated woodpecker cackles. A small cloud’s belly turns pink.
Spring peeper just after moonset. Then whippoorwill. Wood thrush. Carolina wren. Phoebe. A pileated woodpecker cackles and it’s day.
A brief glimpse of sun through the mist and rain-soaked leaves. Then back to the humdrum of pewee and pileated woodpecker.
Overcast and damp, with woodpecker rattle and squirrel-claw clatter and an exuberant robin duetting with his echo.
Sun in the tops of the pines. The sine curve of a pileated woodpecker’s flight path over the house. Her mad cackle after she lands.
Snowstorm. The hammer-blows of a pileated woodpecker on what must be a very hollow dead tree. How annoyed I’d be if it were a human sound!
Five doves sit motionless in the crabapple. The drumming of a pileated woodpecker seemingly in response to metallic banging from the quarry.
Another four inches of light powder. We are rich in snow now. The soundtrack is mostly woodpeckers: downy, pileated, red-bellied.
Leaden sky. The hollow echoes with the drumming of pileated woodpeckers. Two soon stop, but the one with the most resonant tree bangs on.
A pileated woodpecker banging its head, crows denouncing a raven, a chicken cheering for her latest egg… the local dinosaurs are restless.
Pileated woodpecker threading the trees: black and white wings slow as an old film flicker behind the pink and green pixels of new leaves.
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.
Palefaced sky with its one glowing orifice. The woodpeckers are busy with surgeries, removing delicious infestations from limb after limb.