-Which Woodpecker?

During a visit to Naples, Florida to visit my vacationing parents, I had a chance to scan the front page of the local paper, The News-Press. The below-the-fold article treated birding, and its impact on the local economy. There were lots of numbers with six zeroes flying around and clearly, lots of money being spent in south Florida in pursuit of birds.

The one person-on-the-trail quote grabbed by the reporter recorded the longing of one New Jersey woman to see a Pileated Woodpecker. For a few desperate moments before rushing to the airport, this birder stalked the woodpecker. Whether she found the bird is not noted.

Just after the hurricanes last year, with many trees down, and deadwood still standing, I looked up one day from my back porch and picked out the pointed red head of Dryocopus pileatus--Pileated Woodpecker. I later learned this bird had once been on the endangered species list. I just found it beautiful--a male bird, I think, pecking at the rotted limbs of an oak, so alive and bright on the brown of the tree trunk.

For me, sort of a dilettante birder, the finding was accidental--not until last weekend in Naples did the sighting strike me as unusual. Perhaps even now, it does not seem so singular to me, but I will never forget it. I may never see such a bird again, in my yard or in this life, but at one time, one pecked away some forty feet from me. If it had been the last of them, the experience at that moment would have been the same.

Now it is winter and I hear the cries of birds I think must be Red Bellied Woodpeckers every morning. One female Northern flicker hunted ants through our back yard, ignorant of the wild cats who find safety under our house and cars. Two years ago, a male cardinal sparred with the side mirror of my spouse's car, protecting its territory from the reflected challenger. Just Tuesday, a Blue Jay in the back that we thought dead hopped up and fled as I approached. Its wings had been spread as if it were gone, or just catching the sun.

Only today did I learn of the resemblance between Pileated and the lately rediscovered Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers. When I first sighted the bird, and tried to identify it with my Audubon guide, I didn't pay much attention to the comments under "Similar Species". There is no available picture of the ivory-billed in the guide.

Already I know that people fly to this state to see Pileated Woodpeckers. While I wish I had a picture, that bird still lives here in my mind. Now, there also exists a small hope, a tiny chance that I saw an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. I just found the closest match in the book--I can't say it was exact.

Traveling can be wonderful, but I think I have learned there is much to be said for staying quiet and still.