The Red-bellied Woodpecker nest in my yard is no longer in
use, and I’m not sure what exactly happened. The first and only day I saw a
nestling peeking out the entrance hole was July 8. The chick looked strong and
robust, and seemed about ready to fledge. After the parents fed it, they
climbed into the hole and I could hear at least one additional baby being fed,
and quite possibly more.
The next morning, I heard all kinds of unusual sounds in my
yard, and when I ran out, the parents were dive-bombing crows in the nest tree
and the tree next to it. I couldn’t hear any nestlings. I saw three
Red-bellieds fly out of the tree. I’m certain two were adults, but didn’t get a
good look at the one that followed an adult to the backyard behind mine. I’m
hoping against hope that it was the nestling I got photos and video of the day
before, having fledged successfully. But I had no idea what was going on with
the crows.
Several times that day I saw a parent—sometimes the male and
sometimes the female—come to the nest hole with food, and go all the way into
the cavity, but each time I heard no baby sounds and the parent ended up flying
off with the food. That happened once or twice the next day, too. And then I
stopped seeing any Red-bellied Woodpeckers for over a week. Finally, on July
19, I saw an adult male and female and a third bird—I’m not 100 percent certain
of its age, but am hopeful I was seeing the family unit. The adults were
feeding in Russ’s cherry tree, and a couple of times one flew off with a
cherry, which I’m hoping they were bringing to the young one—dense foliage in
my other trees made it impossible to know what was going on.
So what happened to the other nestlings? It’s impossible to
be certain. The squawking I heard first thing in the morning on the 8th
may have been related to the crows—they obviously can’t squeeze into a
woodpecker cavity, but could possibly have pulled out a nestling sticking its
head out to beg, and possibly could have grabbed a fledgling sitting on a
branch. I didn’t hear the noisy sounds a baby crow makes when eating, so I’m at
least a little hopeful that the worst-case scenario—one of the babies being
ripped apart by a crow—didn’t happen. But I’m pretty sure that not more than
one young chick successfully fledged, and I’m afraid something bad happened to the
other chicks in the nest. In just about all my photos and videos of the nest,
at least one fly is wandering about near the entrance—it’s quite possible most
of the babies were harboring botfly larvae—a horrible way for a tiny bird to
die.
The box elder tree with the nest lost a limb on one side of
the cavity a few weeks ago. On July 21, another storm hit, knocking down a big
spruce tree in the yard and ripping off the limb on the other side of the woodpecker
cavity in the box elder, but oddly enough, the actual nest cavity may still be
intact. When we hire a tree service to deal with a few damaged trees from the
big storm, we’ll be removing that section of the box elder’s trunk, and will
slice it open to see what the inside looks like. It’s a sad ending to my
Red-bellied Woodpecker nesting saga, but even one little baby successfully
fledging is a pretty thrilling outcome. It drives home an essential truth—so
many things can go wrong when a pair of birds sets out to build a nest, produce
and care for eggs, and tend to the chicks, yet every bird on the planet
survived that entire process. Each living bird really is a miracle.
