
Red-bellied woodpecker pecking on the tree
Making holes in the maple for his mate to see
She makes her choice and the work begins
Wood chips flying as they dig in
Deeper and deeper into the trunk

They carved and pecked for over a month
Bodies disappear deep into the tree
Now only their tails is all I can see
A cavernous hole a perfectly round circle

Ready to start nesting in those shadows of purple
Warming the eggs for a couple of weeks
Brings out new babies all hairless and weak
Continuous food trips all day for a month
The new birds get stronger and ready for launch
Hanging around for a while in their cover
Then off to the woods their cycle starts over

You can see the hole they started in the center tree. This was in the back of my yard, about fifty or sixty feet away. I could watch them making their next from my living room chair. I watched as she sat on the nest, but I never saw the babies leave nest. The next year they moved to a different location and the squirrel moved in enlarging the hole so much that the whole top of the Maple tree broke off in a storm. I shot the photos with a 200 mm telephoto lens and then cropped them even more with the Windows photo editor.
This happened in the spring of 2017. I posted this poem after watching all this take place. I hope your enjoyed my rerun of this one.
Photos: Dwight L. Roth