Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Do Pileated Woodpeckers begin carving up territories or exhibiting nesting behaviors this early in the Spring, in Springfield Vermont?




Bongo cannot help but to wonder, if it is one same, singular and individual Pileated Woodpecker, that has been seen showing up more and more in recent weeks in the immediate vicinity of the East Coast Operations Center for www.springfieldvermont.org (COMCENTSPFLDVT).
Sightings have certainly become more frequent - a Pileated Woodpecker has been seen mainly in the nearby stand of trees, loping muscularly from trunk to trunk like a combo squirrel/banshee/F22 creature, all elegantly articulated points and razors, with a smart black and white livery punctuated by a bloody red shock of a cap on top, and sporting a heat seaking eye on either side, taking it all in like a pro.
The strange cry of the bird can be heard often as well, very like a crow's voice and sounding like a phrase from the crow-ese but fuller and more southern in a swampy way, with a depth that seems to have an element that is like a reverbration, like an echo searching for the cypress and mangrove to gloam about in, vaguely dinosaurlische and lonely.
This very morning, while out filling the bird feeder, the call could be heard, and very near by - an exotic thickness in the brittle sharp cold air, arresting and attractive in an odd way.
A few minutes later he was suddenly visible from the steamy french press, through a window, twenty feet away, sitting in a berrie laden tree above that just-filled feeder, checking things out and generally upsetting the local chicadees.
There was barely time to get a shot off, and no time to adjust settings, but there was this brief image capture to share, proof positive of the Great Fun to be had, in Springfield, Vermont, Official Home of the Simpsons, and Jewel of the Upper Valley.