The Bird that Stayed

by Barbara Walvoord

(Originally published in the Lathrop Lamp Post, May 20-26, 2017)

Sometimes on a bird walk, with bird songs all around, and lots of  little flying shapes flitting through the trees, your leader stops, cocks her head to listen, then points into the woods, and says, “blue-winged warbler” or “Red-eyed vireo.”  Everyone raises their binoculars, and the lucky person who actually spots the bird says, “See that first little pine tree? Look to the left of it, the third tree down, just to the right of that dead tree?  The vireo is on a branch at about 11 o’clock, about half way up.”  And you raise your binoculars, crane your neck, and then, just as you’ve found the tree, your spotter says, “Oops, it flew.”

On the north campus bird walk May 9, a pileated woodpecker took pity on us.  It was hammering hard on a tree, trying to find the carpenter ants that are its main food.  When we came along, it just kept hammering, right in plain sight, even as we all inched closer, and Lucy raised her long zoom lens and followed it around the tree to get some fabulous photos.

Lathrop’s Hard-Headed Residents

By Barbara Walvoord

(From Lathrop Lamp Post Feb. 9, 2017)

Some of Lathrop’s human residents may be a bit hard-headed, truth to tell, but if you walk on our land these days you may hear our most hard-headed resident–the pileated wood pecker, whose loud drumming or whinnying cry rings through the woods.  Crow-size, it’s America’s largest woodpecker.  Sharon and I were lucky to see one the other day, energetically pounding away at a dead tree behind our house, it’s red-crested head whamming back and forth, and wood chips flying all around.

Pileated woodpecker holes on east campus

Many residents are drawn to Lathrop because of our beautiful forests, and the same is true for our pileated woodpeckers. However, to a woodpecker, the most beautiful tree is a dead one with lots of carpenter ants and other insects burrowed into it.