A collection of holes
(mostly made by me)
The other day I saw a downy woodpecker on the ash tree that reaches out towards my third-floor apartment. She scanned each branch, driving her beak into the bark as she moved. I have noticed an increase in the number of woodpeckers on this ash as the weather has gotten warmer, and since I have only moved here last fall, I’m not sure if the cause is the season, or if the tree is buggier than before. The downy focused mostly on a smaller branch, whose bud-less tips stood stiff in the wind. As she probed, she paused at a spot where the bark had been stripped off, perhaps by her the day before, and made several stronger strikes. As her beak broke through the ash’s spongy flesh, her tongue unwrapped from around her skull and shot into a small previously concealed tunnel. Some poor tree-borer was yanked away by the tongues gripping barbs. I then remember the dream I had last month, in which this very ash tree suddenly died. One of the largest on the street, I suspect my friend is well over a hundred years old. And while they seem quite healthy, and the bug presence very small, I can’t help but worry about the color of the downey’s meal, and whether or not that borer matched the color of leaves that are unfurling further up. The downey then rested on a different branch, where her life partner joined her, and did as birds do in the spring. After a moment of post-coital cuddles, he flew off, likely in search of a more-dead tree to house the babies they had just made.
