red-bellied woodpecker

May 24, 2009

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.

Dave Bonta February 22, 2008

Siren, train whistle, a red-bellied woodpecker ululating in the yard. It’s snowing. Squirrel tracks cross the porch in front of my chair.

February 22, 2024
Overcast at sunrise, but the cloud lid lifts enough for the sun to glimmer through when it crests the ridge. Saturday’s snow is looking threadbare—a…
February 22, 2023
Just enough thinning of clouds for a classic, red-in-the-morning wash of mauve in the east, where quarry trucks are loud with their first loads.
February 22, 2022
Gray with occasional showers. Distant crows. The face that I can’t unsee in the big red maple trunk with its expression of perpetual dismay.
February 22, 2021
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…
February 22, 2019
The sun grows and shrinks as the clouds change in thickness. Two wrens pop out at once from under the porch, one on each side—vociferous.