A lot of environmental activism focuses on what others need to do. Switching to clean energy. Stopping pollution. Conserving large swaths of land. And so on. But individuals play a role, too. We can’t afford to act as if taking care of the planet is always someone else’s problem.
(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.)
For all the times I talked to the sapsucker, it never talked back, so I’ll never know if it was mad at me for pruning the tree. If it was mad, however, it was mad for only a month. I was on my way out to the car when I was nearly blinded by the glowing light reflecting from its vibrant head. “I’m glad you’re back,” I told it and I went inside to fetch my camera.
(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.)
It took a couple of weeks for me to get another chance with the sapsucker, but it did come back — right as I was pouring glass into the recycling bin. I chuckled as it positioned itself on the trunk of the elm, just above my eye-level. But then why would a noisy bird be bothered by my racket?
(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.)
It’s now June. The flowering currant stopped flowering a month and a half ago, but I still see the hummingbird occasionally feeding on the flowers of some overgrown blackberries that I need to clear. As the lockdown orders drag on, photography work is giving way to yard work.
(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.)
Those who freak out about the rows and rows of sap wells forget that people are like sapsuckers. We drill into maple trees just so we have something to pour over pancakes. Maple trees survive us; most trees survive sapsuckers.
Sapsuckers are not murderers. They are farmers. And their harvest feeds the neighborhood.
(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.
