red-bellied woodpecker

Monday January 09, 2012

Dave Bonta January 9, 2012 3

A call half-cackle, half-whinny: red-bellied woodpecker. I spot him in the sunlit crown of a locust, round red head beside a hole.

Dave Bonta April 15, 2011 4

Morning full of the cries of woodpeckers—part ululation, part rusty hinge. Like the sounds the trees make in a winter wind, speeded up.

Dave Bonta March 18, 2011 2

Cloudy and warm. A robin sings in the yard, garrulous as an unmarried uncle. Red-bellied woodpeckers leapfrog each other on a tree trunk.

Dave Bonta September 1, 2010

A goldfinch gone green lands among walnut leaves that have gone yellow. Below, a juvenile red-bellied woodpecker, nape turning orange.

Dave Bonta February 24, 2010

A morning for woodpeckers: I hear the trilling of a red-bellied, the cackling of a pileated, and a downy’s steady trepanning of a maple.

Dave Bonta November 18, 2009

A red-bellied woodpecker’s head going up and down at the top of a tall locust, squeaking like a red marker on the whiteboard sky.

Dave Bonta August 17, 2009

Dawn fog lifts and pauses, so it’s clear to a height of ten feet, then white, then the crescent moon. A red-bellied woodpecker’s slow chant.

Dave Bonta May 24, 2009

For an hour now, the red-bellied woodpecker has been trilling almost non-stop: half yell, half peal. Fleabane blooms beside the sidewalk.

Dave Bonta February 22, 2009

White sky. The soft calls of a pair of downy woodpeckers on adjacent trees. Four chickadees on a high-speed chase tear through the lilac.

Dave Bonta March 23, 2008

Easter Sunday dawns clear and cold. The yard is stippled with fresh tracks. Quiet except for a mourning dove and a red-bellied woodpecker.