(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
Judging from the results of a Google search, most of the people who discover they’re living with a sapsucker do the same thing: Try to find ways to get rid of it. It’s an understandable reaction. As I was now seeing firsthand, the birds do extensive damage.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
I didn’t see the woodpecker that day — I couldn’t see anything through the mess of branches — but I saw the evidence it left behind. From its handiwork, I could even identify it. It was a medium-sized woodpecker known as a red-breasted sapsucker.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
I first noticed the tapping when I was concentrating on a hummingbird flitting around our flowering currants. They are plants that I brought to the property. They have a history in my family.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
I’m a nature photographer. In a normal year, exotic travel is a critical part of the job, or so I tell myself. I’ve crawled inside the magma chamber of an extinct Icelandic volcano. I’ve sat on a beach in New Zealand at sunset as some of the world’s rarest penguins marched by. I’ve stood in the footsteps of the Impressionists to capture a modern take on the white cliffs that plunge into the English Channel.
