Notes from a Beginning Birder: Chasing False Idols through the Woods
By Liz Melville
Photo by Alan McCoy, All other photos by Liz Melville
I was looking and listening for birds as I walked on a trail through a small patch of woods near my parents' assisted living facility. But every time I heard a bird call, their song would be drowned out by the thunderous rumbling of an overhead plane, the whirling, and whooshing of a car, or the banging of a hammer and grinding of a saw from a nearby construction site. While I knew there were birds in these trees, I was unlikely to hear them.
Then, much to my delight, perhaps only thirty feet in front of me, I spotted a pileated woodpecker perched on an old cedar tree. I couldn't believe my luck -- I was in a noisy city and seeing this beautiful woodpecker for the first time.
Fearing he would fly away, I hurriedly opened the camera on my phone and took some snapshots. After gathering proof of my sighting, I walked softly and slowly forward, hoping to get a better look. At about twenty feet away I took more pictures, but as I drew closer and closer I knew there was something wrong. I had been tricked; the woodpecker I had been chasing was not made of bone and feathers, but rather from wood and paint. I looked around wondering who had seen me chasing after this carving. Thankfully, I was all alone.
I resigned myself to the fact that this trip was about visiting my parents and that I was not in the right place and time to see a lot of birds. But then on a later walk that same day when I wasn’t expecting anything, I saw a flash of feathers and heard a knock, knock, knock sound as if someone was hammering a nail into drywall. Ahead of me, on a small deciduous tree, a bird with a fluffy red head and a long beak was peeking around the tree trunk at me. I again tried to use my sleuth powers and walked softly ahead pretending to not even notice that he was there before stopping just a few arm lengths away from the tree trunk he was perched on.
The woodpecker definitely knew that I was there, but he did not want to leave his tree. He would peck, peck, peck on the other side of the tree and then poke his head around the side of the trunk to see if I was still there. It was as if he was telling me.
"Can you just move along? The grubs in this tree are really good and you are disturbing my breakfast."
I knew this bird was a woodpecker, but I had no idea what kind. He was a little bigger than a robin and his coloring was magnificent. His head and chest feathers were blood red and below his red bib the feathers turned muted green and then beige. I did not see his backside as he was careful to keep me in his sights.
After I left him alone to eat his breakfast I sent a picture to my birding friend Stuart to see if she knew what kind of bird he was. Shortly after I hit send, Stuart sent back a picture of a Red-breasted Sapsucker from a birding book and asked me:
"Is this your bird?"
"Yes, yes," I thought with excitement. "I have seen a red-breasted Sapsucker.”
Then I did what I often do when I am excited about something, I overshared. I sent pictures of my new favorite bird to many of my friends including Lisa, who lived in the same city as my parents.
She told me that she had seen a bird that looked just like the Red-breasted Sapsucker in her yard and that he had left parallel horizontal lines of evenly spaced holes in one of her trees. She attributed the tree's death to the damage from the Sapsucker.
This conversation with Lisa made me curious, so the next day I went back to look for the Sapsucker and also to look at the tree trunks. My bird made a brief reappearance before flying off, but he could not hide the holes he had already poked in most of the trees along that street.
On this trip my long walks and short interactions with birds and statues provided me a chance to catch my breath while helping my parents get to appointments and figure out their taxes and care needs. Similar excursions, time with friends and slowing down to see the beauty around me are going to be critical as I walk forward into our changing world.