“If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.” – J.M. Power
A pair of pileated woodpeckers -- Wikipedia photo
Travels With Maggie
I awoke this morning to a rapid knocking coming from outside my RV, which is now parked in the driveway at the home of my son, Lewis, who lives near the Texas Gulf Coast.
One side of Gypsy Lee faces my son’s house and the other a thick row of hedges and tall trees that daily host a vast variety of birds, squirrels, an occasional cat – and on the foliage-lined walkway every morning at 7 o’clock an elderly man walking his very vocal golden-red bloodhound.
Several small dogs on the far side of the woodsy public right of way, always bark when they hear the hound’s deep rumbling voice. Maggie, 14 and quite deaf, usually sleeps through the ruckus. Thankfully I’m almost always up at this time of morning.
Ivory-billed woodpeckers -- Painting by John James Audubon
I was still abed, however, although awake reading while waiting for daylight, when the knocking begin. It was deeper and more persistence than that of a downy woodpecker, which is the most frequent morning visitor that lets me know it’s hovering nearby by knocking on a tree. The sound always triggers my brain to the tapping and rapping at Poe’s door by a raven.
I suspected my bird this morning, however, might be a pileated woodpecker. A look through my binoculars, which are always handy, confirmed my suspicions. Even in the morning’s dim light, this large woodpecker’s size and shape can’t be missed.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen and heard this close look-alike of the more famous ivory-billed woodpecker, which was thought to be extinct until recently. Several respected ornithologists now say they have seen this bird, whose last documented sighting happened in the 1940s. Other, also respected ornithologists, are skeptical.
I just hope that we humans don’t do to the pileated woodpeckers what we did to the ivory-billed, which is to destroy its last remaining habitat.
The pileated survived because it adapted to change. It’s a good lesson for us all in this fast-changing world.
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