Look out. Summer is here! Exciting, heading outdoors, beautiful sun, warm weather, special places to go!
For a hairy woodpecker (Dryobates villosus), summer is actually a slight reprieve after a very busy spring when a well-positioned tree had to be decided upon, then the “right” spot on that tree had to be “debated,” then the excavation had to be completed . . . phew, I’m tired just thinking about it.
The effort to dig a hole in wood is high by any standard, but woodpeckers do it with their mouth! They have a special shock-absorbing system built between the bill and the skull that allows the birds to deliver repeated blows with their head that would send the average organism into concussion protocol.
Hairy woodpeckers are tough and very adaptable birds found all across the North American continent, and parts of Central America, in deciduous to coniferous forests, living from sea level to almost 11,500 feet in elevation. But wherever hairy woodpeckers occur, they tend to spread out. I’ve never seen more than four of them in close proximity to one another. Hairy woodpeckers don’t generally get the attention from birders that they deserve, as they are in direct competition with their more charming, adaptable, and diminutive cousin, the downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens).
All that spring work that affects the outer world—selecting a nest site and developing it—sets the stage for the potential of a very beautiful inner world: the egg laying, the little ones showing themselves, identifying the best hunting grounds, and the pair bond strengthening through life’s most extreme dramas.
Summer’s slight reprieve, it’s still an exciting, eventful, and easily exhausting time. The need to protect the little ones is as great as it will ever be. Flying from hunting ground to nest and back again, possibly up to 60 to 70 times in a day (not including securing the food item), can challenge any feathered heart rate. That sparkling sun and warm weather enable opportunities to hunt longer, go farther, explore more. After about 60 days of creating and developing this inner world, the result can be three or four more young, beautiful hairy woodpeckers.
But this consummate story of creation doesn’t necessarily stop here. An amazing fact about most woodpeckers: They don’t reuse their nest hole the following year. And if the site of the hairy woodpecker’s beautiful inner happening (usually in mature or decaying trees) is undisturbed, it’s much more likely for it to be occupied again the following year, but by a completely different type of bird.
There are a whole host of birds that fall into the category of what we call “cavity-nesters.” These are birds that prefer to build their nest inside of something. It could be anything, from behind a peeling piece of tree bark to an old work boot left on a shelf on a backyard porch.
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The following spring at the hairy woodpecker’s old nest hole, a pair of blue and rust-colored, feather-covered balls, weighing about an ounce each, could reuse the cavity to create more inner and outer beauty. The western bluebirds (Sialia Mexicana) are kind of a success story. This bird’s close cousin the eastern bluebird was disappearing in the 1900s mainly because we were mismanaging the dead snags these birds prefer to use for their cavity nests. Once we did the research and started building nest boxes as a substitute, the birds found them suitable and their numbers improved.
The next spring, after the bluebird’s spring, a pair of half-ounce, french gray, pointy-headed birds could show up and reuse the cavity. What the oak titmouse (Baeolophus inornatus) lacks in color it makes up for in personality. These innocuous little birds are very vocal, belting out a variety of songs and calls magnitudes louder than what you would think their little round bodies can handle. They are feisty, adaptable, and pair for life. And the vast majority of the entire oak titmouse population lives only in California.
And so on, the following spring, after spring, after spring.
It’s obvious to me that all woodpeckers are unsung national treasures. The amazing wood-drilling talent of one hairy woodpecker echoes beauty for years into our outer futures, so much so that we all should be touching the placard of our local wooded green spaces in gratitude each time we find ourselves walking by.
This deep effort of creating such a lasting infrastructure for inner growth and beauty results in an outflow of beautiful manifestations: beautiful in, beautiful out.
