Watermelon season

Lewis’s Woodpecker on a fencepost by Micki Long.

Clamoring for attention

The aging brain—or, as I prefer to call it, the distracted brain—can be a frustrating thing. But sometimes a lack of focus pays unexpected dividends. I’d meant to turn right and head to a favorite trail for an end-of-the-day hike, race to the supermarket afterward, then head home for a late dinner. Instead, on autopilot, I turned left toward town, not registering my mistake until I was halfway there. Exasperated, I toyed with turning around, but I’d already left everything until too late. Weighing my options, I thought of the local riverside park that was on my current route. It would mean a shorter walk for my two border collies, but they met outings of any kind with unbridled enthusiasm.

So, after securing pinecones to bolster our evening entertainment with games of fetch, we set out along the meandering trail, walking past a small pond under an open canopy of scattered cottonwood trees. Back on autopilot, I kicked the pinecones that were carefully placed in my path and listened to the evening’s melodious soundtrack. Suddenly, though, I was assailed by a querulous, jumbled churring noise. I stopped in my tracks, a smile breaking out on my face, as I looked upward toward the sound’s source. I was hearing the voluble food-begging calls of baby woodpeckers.

While many baby birds are quiet at their nests so as not to attract predators, nestling woodpeckers are notoriously loud, noisily conveying their hunger to their parents from the relative safety of enclosed, difficult-to-access tree cavities. Raising my binoculars, I scanned a large cottonwood snag that bordered the trail, checking for potential nest holes. A dark head protruded from one of them and with a happy jolt, I realized I’d found the nest of a Lewis’s Woodpecker—a bird that is as notable for its non-woodpeckerlike qualities as it is for its striking looks.

Leaving its nest cavity, the Lewis’s flapped toward a neighboring cottonwood, looking like a small crow. While most woodpeckers have an undulating flight—with upward bursts of flapping interspersed with descending, tucked-wing glides—Lewis’s have a level, flapping flight. And while these woodpeckers can look all-dark at a distance, their coloration is distinctive.

Years ago, when I was a graduate student helping with an ornithology field trip in western Montana, my major professor raised his arm in delight to point out a bird that wasn’t exactly rare but wasn’t commonly seen. “The watermelon bird!” he exclaimed. “The Lewis’s Woodpecker. Green on the outside and pink in the middle.” Since then, his words have sprung to my mind every time I’ve spotted a Lewis’s. Green on the outside and pink in the middle perfectly describe the bird’s metallic-green back and frosted-pink front. A gray collar and upper breast, and a greenish-black and red head complete the bird’s unique appearance.

A denizen of western North America, named after famed explorer Meriwether Lewis, this large woodpecker is said to inhabit open ponderosa pine and recently burned forests. I see them most often, though, in riparian areas dominated by towering cottonwoods. Unlike most other woodpeckers, which bore into wood with their powerful bills to retrieve hidden prey, Lewis’s typically hunt like flycatchers, sallying out from a perch to snag flying insects. They will also glean insects from tree bark. Outside the breeding season, Lewis’s Woodpeckers are nomadic, feeding on and caching nuts that they vigorously defend from other woodpeckers. As I listened to the raucous nestlings, I watched the adult woodpeckers launch themselves from high cottonwood branches to grab insects for their hungry brood. But they refrained from going to their nest hole until I continued down the trail.

As with so many other North American bird species, there are now only half as many Lewis’s Woodpeckers as there were fifty years ago. Their habitat has been converted or destroyed by logging, overgrazing, development, and fire suppression, which has left fewer standing dead or diseased trees for nesting and shelter, and less available food.

As I left the hard-working woodpeckers to tend to their offspring, I thought about the many wild creatures that live out their lives—finding food, raising young—all around us, despite the many impediments that we put in their way. Although these animals are acutely aware of us, few of their activities capture our attention. Sometimes, though, we are compelled to notice the wild lives around us—as I did upon hearing clamoring youngsters in the midst of watermelon season. And when we do, it’s all too apparent how much they adjust their behavior to accommodate our lives. What a difference it would make to them if we did a little more to accommodate theirs.

The Lewis’s greenish and red face often looks uniformly dark at a distance. Photo by Micki Long. The nest cavity that I observed in a cottonwood snag at my local riverside park.

Take a small step to help birds

Birds are in crisis and need our help more than ever. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, over 96 million people in North America watch birds. If each of us does something (anything!) to help them, we may be able to reverse declining bird numbers.

1. The first step to helping birds is to notice birds and to appreciate the constant adjustments they make to live their lives around us. When we spend time observing animals, we tend to care about them more, which bolsters our desire to take helpful steps to conserve them. Use the Merlin app to help you identify the unknown bird songs you might be hearing so you know which birds are around you. Use the Seek app by iNaturalist to help you identify your local plants and insects—critical elements of our birds’ worlds.

2. Summer is a festive season, but if you’re having an outdoor celebration, please don’t release balloons to the wild. Balloon remnants are among the biggest killers of trash-ingesting seabirds. And deflated balloons occur in higher densities in some of our desert natural areas than western diamond-backed rattlesnakes.

3. If you have a steep-sided paddle pool, water tank, or other water source in your yard, please provide exit ramps for wildlife. Birds and other animals use these water sources to drink and bathe but sometimes drown when they can’t make it up the steep sides to get out.

4. Many young birds are now leaving their nests and are at their most vulnerable. Outdoor cats pose the most serious threat to these naïve birds, but pet dogs can fatally injure fledgling birds, too. Check your yard for young birds before releasing your dog into it. And if your dog is a wildlife chaser, please keep it leashed while on nature walks, particularly during fledgling season.

Until next time …

Lewis’s Woodpecker showing off one of its zygodactyl feet—two toes pointing forward and two backwards—an adaptation that allows woodpeckers to grasp and climb tree trunks. Photo by Micki Long.

P.S. Shout-out to Richard (Dick) Hutto, now-retired University of Montana ornithology professor, whose unforgettable “watermelon bird” description has always stayed with me. Dick also hosted the PBS show BirdWatch (and featured my research on American Dippers in the linked episode).

To discover how unique individual birds are and how their individuality can impact their conservation, check out my book Feather Trails—A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds.