Posts Tagged ‘pileated woodpecker’
Biking Progress
A search of the area behind the cabin where Cyndie had previously seen the fawn turned up no signs of it. It may have lain down in a tiny curled ball, but since we didn’t see or hear from it the entire rest of the day, we prefer to imagine its mother returned and they wandered off to live happily ever after. The walk through the woods turned up some rewarding scenery in consolation.
The trillium is putting on a pretty good show for us. My second favorite adornment of the forests up here is the ferns. They are coming on strong this weekend.
The surprise we least expected to find was methodically pecking away on the shady side of a tree. It took some hunting to find it by honing in on the most likely direction the sounds were coming from and then staring long enough to catch a glimpse of the movement.
That’s a Pileated Woodpecker way up in the tree. They are the largest woodpeckers we have in North America, but they are a somewhat rare sighting. That makes it doubly special whenever we have one pay a visit.
I was able to take advantage of good weather yesterday afternoon and get out for a 39-mile loop riding my bike. My derailleur recalibration worked well, and I pushed my mileage to more than double my previous rides this season. My new gravel tires worked well, too, allowing me to confidently ride a road I didn’t know would be gravel. That portion offered me the chance to witness the smallest fawn I have ever seen in person. Compared to the one that was bleating outside our sunroom, this one was practically a quarter of the size.
It looked like it could have been born only a few hours earlier. I came up over a rise in the road and found the mamma and baby staring directly at me from the middle of the gravel road. As I approached them, I spoke a few words, which triggered the doe to leap off into the sparse growth beside the road. The matchstick-like legs of the fawn wobbled their way to follow the mom.
Steve arrived yesterday with guests who are friends from Sweden. We enjoyed a big feast for a late dinner after offering tours of the house and surroundings, and visiting with several neighbors for happy hour on the deck next to our place. I was feeling pretty self-satisfied about the distance I had traveled on my bike ride earlier in the afternoon, but my pride was taken down a notch when I learned a couple next door biked 55 miles, 20 or 25 of which were unplanned. They missed a turn and rode much farther south than they had intended.
My leg muscles were on the verge of cramping after my effort. I don’t want to think about the pain of riding that many unplanned miles.
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Big Little
Amid all the big issues swirling around the pandemic, like federal government response, different state government responses, economic doom and gloom, employment insecurities, and uncertain futures, there are still a lot of typical everyday little things that continue to play out.
I find that I keep putting off making a call to address a need to replace the windshield on my Crosstrek. For months I have ignored a chip from a rock impact that only showed up in my view when the light was hitting it just right. More recently, a second stone strike, low on the passenger side, began to form a crack. Now that crack is slowly growing evermore toward the midpoint.
Last night, we enjoyed lo mein and sesame chicken take-out from King House restaurant in Ellsworth. It tasted divine. It was almost a religious experience to open the classic white box of lo mein and dish out a generous portion of noodles and goodies onto my plate, then spoon the dangling noodles back into the box to discover it was still filled to the top. If I hadn’t just served it myself, I would have argued that it couldn’t be true.
I’m already looking forward to enjoying the leftovers in the next few days. There looks to be enough remaining to feed an army.
While we were up in the loft eating, there was a very loud bang on one of our windows. We get a lot of bird strikes against our glass portals to the forest views, but this one was loud enough that I struggled to imagine what could have made that impact. A small deer? When the dog and I finally reached the front of the sunroom, a very large bird leaped up into the air and flew to the closest giant oak tree. It was a pileated woodpecker!
Cyndie noted the feathers and a panic-induced s-shape of excrement stuck to one of the crank-out windows beside me.
Little distractions from the historical pandemic drama playing out in the agonizingly slow motion of months threatening to drag into years are a welcome diversion.
Even if they have to do with two grossly decaying mice that were discovered in the long-stored chicken waterer that Cyndie pulled out for use now that freezing temperatures appear to be behind us for another year. Apparently, they figured out a way to squeeze inside the egg-shaped plastic dome, but not how to get out again.
I’m told it didn’t smell pleasant.
I have no new news to report on the friendly feathered visiting grouse that was keeping Cyndie company on Wednesday as she worked around her garden plots. Maybe it was just passing through. Just like the woodpecker and so many of the other wild travelers who traverse our terrain.
The two worlds of big things and small things coexist, but rarely seem to show any particular concern for one another.
Gladly, we have free choice to decide which of the two will have the focus of our attention at any given moment in time.
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Relative Something 