I’ve been checking on my Red-bellied Woodpeckers every day, and every day the chicks, still entirely hidden in the cavity, get noisier and more
insistent. When I returned from Maine on June 15, probably only a day or two
after they’d started hatching, I couldn’t hear any sounds during feeding time;
it took a few days before I could pick up tiny whispery sounds, and I needed my
hearing aids to pick up that. When the parents came in with food, they usually
brought a few small items, and they spent a minimum of two or three minutes
inside the cavity feeding the young, and probably brooding them to help them
maintain a healthy body temperature. Baby woodpeckers hatch out in a very
undeveloped state, and need a lot of gentle attention to survive, much less to
thrive.
As the days passed, the little guys first grew louder during
feedings, and then could be heard for seconds, and then minutes, after the
parent left the nest. Now I’ve been back for almost three weeks, and the
ever-growing babies are keeping up their insistent begging even longer. They’re
staying below the cavity entrance so I still can’t see them, but over the
weekend the parents started holding food at the entrance now and then, reaching
in several times as if to entice them to the entrance hole. Through Sunday the
parents still had to go all the way in to reach the chicks, but on the Fourth
of July, the babies could climb high enough that both parents could deliver the
food while remaining at the entrance hole. Any day now I’ll see the first baby
face.
The nestlings take the food as fast as the parents can
deliver it, so feedings are short and sweet—sometimes literally so, because now
the parents sometimes bring berries as well as insects. Insistent calling draws
the parents back much more frequently now, often with just a single big grub, and
feedings last only one or two seconds.
On Saturday morning, July 2, in one 15-minute period the
parents came in 10 times; in the next 21 minutes, they returned only 3 times.
On the videos I made, you can hear Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, flickers,
crows, robins, cardinals, Chipping Sparrows, and a Red-eyed Vireo. The Red-bellied
parents pretty much ignored them unless one was in the actual nest tree—then a
parent would dive-bomb it, sometimes hitting it hard rather than simply giving
a warning.
On Tuesday, June 28, a baby squirrel fell asleep on the broken
limb on one side of the cavity opening while an older squirrel groomed itself
on the limb rising above the opening. The male Red-bellied Woodpecker was
inside the cavity, looking back and forth between the two, for about a minute
after I arrived. It’s not that he was afraid to tangle with squirrels, but he
seemed to be weighing how probable it was that one would enter the cavity while
he was attacking the other. He bided his time until the female flew in and
aggressively dive-bombed the baby squirrel. Branches obscured my view of much
of the action, but she appeared to actually knock the little guy off the branch.
I disapprove of squirrels raiding nests, but this little guy was napping, and
I’m partial to baby squirrels, too, so I was glad when the little rodent caught
the trunk and scurried safely away. Meanwhile, the male Red-bellied came out
and the pair drove off the larger squirrel together. Squirrels and chipmunks
eat a disconcerting number of baby birds, so diligence is essential even as it distracts
from the essential search for food for growing babies.
I start hearing the parents about five minutes before
sunrise every morning, and they keep at it, hour after hour, until about
sunset. Once the babies fledge in a week or two, the parents will have to
maintain their vigilance over a much larger area as the fledglings learn to
negotiate the world. Last year I was seeing young Red-bellieds with their
parents into September, so raising babies is an all-consuming commitment
through the entire season that many of us humans take our vacations, and they
can never leave those young at a daycare center for an hour’s respite. Raising
baby woodpeckers is not for the faint-hearted, and woodpeckers play such a
central role in forest ecology that raising young ones is a job that makes every
one of our lives better. They deserve our gratitude.
