Peanutizing the Boudoir

Sitting out in the rain is one thing; poking food in every nook and cranny of your roost snag is another. I feel sometimes like I'm documenting some pretty maladaptive behavior on Garrett's part. I call it Peanutizing the Boudoir.

It's natural for a red-headed woodpecker to store food against a rainy (or icy or snowy) day. But really, Garrett--there are so many places to put it--do you really want to poke peanuts, Zick dough and sunflower hearts all over your bedroom tree?

I think about a mouse or opossum climbing up the tree. Or, on one of these rainy warm nights, gack! a raccoon. Snuffling around for food in the rotty wood and reaching in Garrett's cavity and...

I can't even think about it.

Garrett doesn't worry. He just keeps finding new places for roasted peanuts.  You can see one just above the sawn-off branch stub. He'll have to go around back to store the one he's got now.

Garrett is pretty bossy about peanuts and Zick dough. He lets the other woodpeckers eat them sometimes. Other times he chases them on merry flashing flights around the yard. Garrett tried suet when he first hit the yard almost two weeks ago and didn't much like it, so the hairy and downy woodpeckers (hairy on left, downy on right) resort to eating a lot more suet now, because Garrett will let them.

 I watch a downy woodpecker doing something I've seen hairy and red-bellied and now red-headed woodpeckers do. When they're processing a food item, and they're trying not to drop it, they'll extend the folded wings to try to contain it. It's a little like a hawk mantling its prey, but the wings are kept folded. It reminds me of someone trying to catch something between their knees when their hands are occupied. I was happy to get these shots of the behavior.

See how the wing is dropped to help contain the peanut? I'm reminded that birds do every amazing thing they do without the help of hands. Just a bill and feet, and sometimes wings standing in for hands.

Which includes excavation. Garrett continues to enlarge his bedroom every day.  

Ptooo!

gak gak gak

It's easier for him to get in and out now.

and out he swings in one smooth motion.

He's not as vocal as he'd be were there other red-headed woodpeckers around to talk to, but occasionally I hear Garrett sounding off. The only call he's used is a rolling Kwirrrrr Kwirrrrr. I caught him in what looked like an advertising display yesterday.

He sat for a long time looking out of the cavity, then emerged and puffed his head feathers up until his head looked like a red rubber ball.

All puffed out, he swung side to side in exaggerated arcs, calling Kwirr Kwirr Kwirrr as he reached each side.

It really looked like cavity advertisement to me. Please, Garrett, if you're trying to attract a mate, not there. I'd have to put electric fencing around the dang tree. And you know I would.

Right after the display, I got my first and so far only nice flight shot. Mmmmm. It takes bright sunlight and a quick trigger finger to get that. Remember I'm standing atop my computer table with my elbows on the windowsill, shooting at an angle through double-pane glass. It's not ideal, but then neither am I.

I'm getting the most out of Garrett, because he's the Mostest Bird.**

**Anyone remember Man o' War, the "mostest hoss?" Well, Garrett's like that to me.

Garrett Makes a Home

I can't tell you how fabulous it is to be enjoying our fourth full day (by the time you read this, a full week) of Garrett. All I can do is show you. Every time I see him my heart leaps. It's like new love. There's something about his colors that make all my happy neurons fire at once. It's enough that he's beautiful, but he's so funny and cute, too, so inquisitive...I've been letting myself think that Charlie's come back to keep me company. 

It doesn't hurt to think that. I miss Charlie, my sweet little green goofball, every single day. And having a bird around again, even if he's flying free outside, helps fill that hole just a little bit.

Garrett is so bright, so cleanly marked, so outlandishly unexpected among the grays, browns, olives and occasional blues of winter.

I still think someone left a toy on the deck railing when I see him decorating it.

You know, one of those toys that squawks when you squeeze it.  The resemblance is rather apt. Garrett's  CHUBBEH.

  Zick being Zick, I began to worry the second night of Garrett's stay where he would sleep. I would gladly give him Charlie's climate-controlled aviary. I get so attached, I forget that woodpeckers are fully capable of making their own homes.  

So Garrett is sitting in the mulberry tree just outside the studio window on a gloomy afternoon and I'm staring at him and he launches off in a fanfare of black, white and red but I can tell by the way he's braking he's not going far. I run to the next window with my camera and get there just in time to see him do this:

He's taken up residence in a broken birch stub just off the back corner of our house! These were the first gray birches we planted on moving here in 1992. Of course, being birches and host to every insect and fungus on the planet, they're dead now. But we did not cut them down.  We let them naturally deliquesce. And if you are looking up that word right now, know it is one of my favorites. Ever.

One trunk bit now lies on the back deck railing, serving as Garrett's Zick Dough feeder. And the one still standing is his bedroom. Awwww!

I was not the only person who noticed him going into the cavity for the first time. Three Carolina chickadees began scolding like mad, their dee dee dee’s reaching a crescendo each time Garrett's head popped out of the hole.  Perhaps the night roost had changed hands and was now chickadee property. We have a surfeit of chickadees this year, probably thanks to the fact that our backyard pair fledged NINE from a faux birchbark Gilbertson house not 20 feet away. (With a little help from me; I fostered three orphans into an existing brood of six).

Tough tits, chickadees. This is my house now.

 Before long his crimson head popped out and then he disappeared again, coming back up with a bill full of punky birch wood!

Garrett was excavating, making himself a home. This cavity, I knew, had been the night roost for a downy woodpecker last fall. Nothing quite like having a downy woodpecker almost pith you when you peek into a mystery cavity right at eye level…you don’t forget that.

Ptoo!! The wind carried his sawdust away.

 Up and back he went, bringing the fill out and scattering it with a quick shake of his head.

Ptoo!

I'm standing atop a desk in the studio, shooting through glass, loving every second of The Garrett Show. I spent the entire MLK day Monday, dawn to dark, documenting his every move. One could do worse than be a woodpecker documentarian; one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Finally, he was done. He squiggled out of the rather tight space.

Enh! Enh! Too much PB and lard...

and perched for a long time, looking fondly at his new house. Red-headed woodpeckers are at once the flashiest and most phlegmatic of woodpeckers, sitting for long periods in one spot. Garrett spends a good portion of his day in just this position, staring into his boudoir.

It is a fine house, and you are a fine bird. I see you feel welcome here. That was our intent.

Stick with people who let dead wood stand in the yard until it falls down by itself, who think it has its own beauty. Who know just what a woodpecker likes.