The Woodpeckers

To my left, a robin sing-songs merrily to signal the fading of another day into velvet dusk.  Beyond it, the drumming of a woodpecker echoes through the tulip poplars.  Tap tap tap tap tap.  It's amazing how it carries.  This unique form of communication puts this bird into an entirely different category for me--birds without a song; true, woodpeckers each have a particular "laugh" that they belly out as they shop from tree to tree for the best produce, but it's far from the melodic prowess of, say, anything in the thrush family.  I keep waiting to hear a mate respond, but this lone woodpecker knocks at the door of an empty home.

I stop to admire the perfect holes in a perfect line in a gentle spiral up the side of one of the poplars.  Signs of a yellow-bellied sap sucker, one woodpecker I've seen least often in my life (and most of those sightings, sadly, involved someone discovering a dead one at the base of a tree somewhere).  They do have somewhat of a yellow belly, so unlike the red-bellied woodpecker, this one resembles its name.  I run my fingers along the old holes, tracing upward.  I can picture the bird with its special feet (two toes in the front and two in the back, unlike most birds with three in front and one in back) clutching the furrowed bark, then shuffling up and over a few centimeters to try again.  Over and over, until this pattern emerged, like viewing slits in a defense tower. 

Leaving the tree behind and cresting the hill, new drumming finds my ears.  Ah, there was a response, I just couldn't hear it.  I position myself so that I can hear one bird out of each ear, interrupting each other, and am surprised when I hear yet a third woodpecker drumming uphill in front of me.  So, someone was home after all.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Photo courtesy of monarchbfly.com

Woodpecker feet

Photo courtesy of burdr.com

(I highly recommend this link if you're interested in more information about bird feet!  It's very cool!)