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Of the Birds and the Trees

So, here in North Idaho we are very lucky to have a wide variety of wildlife, considerably more than I ever saw in Southern California.
Bald Eagles, Osprey, Elk, White Tailed Deer, Moose, Wild Turkey, Canadian Geese, Swans, Wood Ducks and on and on with varieties of other small animals and birds.
On our property itself we have quite a lot to see, but to me, one of the most beautiful birds that is also one of the hardest to spot and causes the most damage to our trees is the Pileated Woodpecker.

Adult birds are said to be around 18 inches (45.72 cm), and the one I've seen twice is a big bird. These are the biggest woodpecker species in North America. Black with some white and a red crest, I've read these birds to have been the inspiration for the cartoon character "Woody Woodpecker" in the 1940s. To me I think of them as the relative of the thought to be extinct "Ivory Billed Woodpecker" from the South East swaps.
In the years we've lived here now I've only gotten one fuzzy photo of one so far and while I've occasionally seen them flying over the trees, you can hear them much more often than see them in our forest.


The photo above, with my hand to give a sense of scale, was taken this morning at one of the cedar trees  in our forest that the woodpeckers have more recently been attacking. And it's deep too, almost all the way to the center of this tree. I read that these woodpeckers can 'hear' the bugs they're after in the trees they attack. So if the bugs won't get the tree the woodpecker will!


Stepping back, you can see they don't usually go for just one hole on a tree. I should have taken a photo of the wood shards at the base of this tree to show just how well they can get a hole this large made!

The photo below is of another cedar tree closer to our house, they make holes in other trees but we've noticed more 'intense' and deep holes in our cedar population. These holes have attempted to heal as best the tree can, but as the top two holes are to the tree's core I expect this tree ultimately can't survive.



If you're reading this you should have the ability to watch YouTube videos, and as we found, there are many posted videos of Pileated Woodpeckers as well as videos made of the birds in the act of chipping out holes such as these. Their large bills easily whack out large shards of wood with each hammer like blow. Since I can't get any good photos or videos myself, check out what others have gotten and posted!

Otherwise in our area, we've been dealing with our first two weeks of higher then normal temps, (but then is it really abnormal if it happens for several years?), above average temps of mid 90s to low 100s. Where summers 'used to be' mainly low to mid 80s with a week or two of 90s, to last summers mostly 90s all summer, to already two weeks of very hot temps of around 100, yes, I'd say warming it is!
And the last few days especially have been hot and hazy with the smoke from the large fires in central Washington state. That kind of amber glow that Stacy and I am are all to familiar with from all the fires we'd dealt with in southern California before we moved here.

Today Stacy's in Coeur 'D Alene for yet more meetings and in a couple of weeks she'll be going to California to visit with Sandy and her family.

Till next time, Tad

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