© Loree Griffin Burns
One of my sons spotted this hole in the tippy top of a snaggy tree in the neighbor’s front yard, and he had a feeling about it. It’s the size and shape of a woodpecker nest hole, and since this boy has got a bit of his mother’s curiousity about birds, he waited at the foot of the tree. When he was sure, he ran for his camera. And his mother.
The two of us sat at together on the neighbor’s lawn as the sun went down and the mama woodpecker flitted around wondering what we were up to. (I suspect the neighbor’s wondered too, though they didn’t ask!) Eventually she got used to us and returned to feeding her nestlings. We couldn’t see them, but every time she went into the hole with a beak full of bug, the little ones squeaked and squawked.
I’ve walked and run and driven by this tree a dozen times in the last couple weeks, and I never once noticed the hole or saw the woodpecker or heard the nestlings. Funny, that. Did you see her? The woodpecker, I mean? She is in that image up there, near to her home, close to her babies. You have to look twice to see her …