My Winter Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker (male) and
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (female)

Sunday was a sunny day and cold.
Against a bright blue sky and beyond frosted windows, we counted 8 woodpeckers, in bold black and white—drawn to the edge of the woods by seeds and suet. The most numerous and smallest, the Downy Woodpeckers, we see often and know well. And the Red-bellied, Hairy, and Pileated, in fewer numbers, often visit. These woods and the many dead and fallen trees provide the insects and nesting sites for these year-round residents of eastern North America.

But, it is not often that she visits us here, this migratory woodpecker who spends the warm summer months in Canada and eastern Alaska. In fact, only twice in the 16 years we’ve lived in southwestern Ohio, have we seen a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.
Whether, on this day, she was just passing through to a more southern spot or arriving to spend the winter with us, I don’t know.
But I have a big box of suet cakes to see her through the coldest days ahead.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Sphyrapicus varius,
feeding at Suet


View more ABC Wednesdays here!

Have you seen...

The trails were ours alone at Germantown Reserve.
The browns of fall, faded now. The sunlight barely penetrating, though not a leaf between us and sky.

We walked past tree after tree, the gray furrowed bark chipped bare--a brilliant, red core revealed.
In the distance, the Pileateds call.
These woods of Twin Creek are their home.

New work and old.



The striking black-and-white, with the showy red crest has carved his name here.
The deep, chiseled holes equally striking in the spring sunshine.


Cherry trees.




And fallen chips.

"Have you seen...." is an effort to discover the unusual beauty in things not usually appreciated for their beauty.