:::::::::::::::W:O:O:D:P:E:C:K:E:R:S::::::::::::::

The beautiful redheaded woodpecker

Before I moved into Woodpeckerville, I figured woodpeckers

speared their food. Why else would you keep ramming your beaky lips into a tree if you don’t get food, right? Turns out they have an especially long and clever tongue. A couple of inches long. After drilling a hole, they stick in the tongue and wrap it around their prey. They can get a pretty good grip because they have very sticky spit and the tongue is covered with bristles. (See? One more thing to be grateful for––no bristles on your tongue.)

What are they extracting from the trees? Insects and grubs for the most part.  If you savor escargot,  you'd probably be able to eat grubs. The rest of us will count our blessings that we don't have to crunch down on one of those things. That impressive woodpecker tongue is also useful for drinking; we often have woodpeckers drinking from our hummingbird feeders. They love fruit and nuts as well, but nothing so much as a snifter of tree sap after dinner.

Some woodpeckers drill to forage for food, others are seeking nesting sites. Depending on the type of bird, you can find small holes, huge holes, or a series of tiny holes around the tree. To get a good grip for drilling, woodpeckers have a strong, stiff tail to brace themselves against the tree. Otherwise, the recoil would be terrific, and there would be woodpeckers shooting off of trees throughout the forest. You would think the tree might be the worse for wear, but it actually benefits from having pests removed.

When I watch a woodpecker head hammer repeatedly on a tree trunk, I always wonder why they don’t suffer from Shaken Woodpecker Syndrome. They are exerting significant force, and may achieve in the neighborhood of 15-16 whacks a second. If they peck on your roof and you are inside the house, it’s louder than a drum rim-shot. Thank heavens we have plenty of trees to distract them. In fact these birds' heads are designed to take a beating. Nature has made the brain-to-skull ratio a little different than ours.

Woodpecker brain has
more room for error

Our brain is close to the skull

Unfortunately, in order to leave more space between the brain and the skull, the brain must be small. Maybe if the brain were a little bigger, the woodpecker could think of an easier way to get its dinner.

Red bellied woodpecker
(Don't ask me-I didn't name it)

If you have done any wood chopping, you know what happens if you don’t wear your safety goggles. Woodpeckers wearing goggles––what a wonderful thought! But instead, to keep out the flying sawdust, they go with special third eyelids to protect the eyes and feathers to cover their nostril slits.

Once those cavities are drilled out for nests, woodpeckers must defend the home front. Animals without built-in jackhammers are thrilled to find such housing and try to become squatters.

There are a couple of hundred kinds of woodpeckers ranging from smaller than your hand to over 20 inches. In addition to the redhead and the red-bellied, these are the ones that amuse us all year round.

The downy–

or is it a hairy-

or is it a ladderback? Nah, it's a downy.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker

Flicker feasting on hackberries

Eastern flicker

Flicker flaunting it outside our upstairs window

The astounding pileated seen at a great distance
Woody Woodpecker lives!

To watch the pileated woodpecker mating ritual:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWznm2HA1hc


To hear the pileated mating call:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxXkG4mqeWQ&feature=related

To compare downy-hairy-ladderback w'peckers:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/AboutBirdsandFeeding/woodpeckerIDtable.htm

                                                                                           


SHAPES 

The woods, the meadows, the pond, the sky

The plants, the animals, the earth itself

The microscopic world and the big view

         Winter, summer, spring, autumn

                  Night, day, dawn, dusk

You cannot escape it––the countryside is a cornucopia of shapes. It’s very appealing to those of us who loved geometry.

Some shapes are interesting in their predictability. They are symmetrical or repetitive or mirror images. 




Other shapes are beautiful in their unpredictability, their irregularity.

Whenever I walk, snapshots of shapes jump out at me. Sometimes they're part of nature’s structure. Other times it seems as though the plants and animals are posing in an incidental shape, one that may dissolve the instant you notice it.

Those Structural Shapes––––

Jack-in-the-pulpit

Dragonfly wing

Ice crystals along a corn leaf

And Those Incidental Shapes–––

Blowing grass draws an arc in the snow

When the world makes no sense, take a better look. 




Truth is, it’s in pretty good shape.

CHRONOBIOLOGY

There are people who believe astrological signs impact their personalities and the events in their lives. (My dad used to call such people hookies––rhymes with zoo keys.) Dan Quayle and I share the same birthday, so don’t be talking to me about horoscopes. What amazes me is that people believe in those predictions (which are concocted in a damp basement in Marin County), but pay no attention whatsoever to zeitgebers. Can you believe that?

Zeitgebers truly do impact our lives, and when you live in the country, you learn to respect them. They are those cues in the environment that your body wants you to pay attention to. Your body wants to be in sync with the swaying and spinning of the earth and galaxy. If you ignore your body’s requests, you will be out of sorts. Ignore your circadian rhythms at your own peril. It’s so much easier on your body and your being if you dance to these fascinating rhythms rather than struggling against them.

Bodies notice when the earth rotates and when it revolves, when the sun and moon rise and set, when the tides come and go. Bodies notice when temperatures rise and fall. Based on that information, your hypothalamus decides when you should go to sleep and when you should awaken. I bet most of the ugly news on the front page is spawned by those who ignore their circadian rhythms.

In the very early morning, when the eastern sky begins to lighten, there is a particular quiet, a peacefulness. There is a bit of unclaimed time. All of your systems are sitting down, having a cup of tea, saying “Ahhhhhhh.” You can’t hear them if you’re still sleeping. And you certainly can’t hear them if you get up late, rush around, forget things, and snap at everyone in your path. It ain’t natural, and it will burn out your clutch. 

Cityscapes obscure these environmental cues. Who even knows when the sun is up? Is it when it’s visible over the Hamburg Inn? No wonder they serve breakfast until noon. Has it really set when it falls behind the Fin and Feather building? Out in the country, my eyelids drop just as the sun sinks below the horizon, early in the evening in winter and later in the summer. And when a shimmer of morning light seeps through my eyelids just before sunrise, my body gets the message and nudges me awake. 

Get thee to where you can see the zeitgebers all around you. Zeitgeber literally means "time giver." Early to bed and early to rise, and you will be given the gift of time. 

Good night,  my dearie, dearie. . . .