via wikimedia commons, matt felperin
Strong Recovery
The male cockaded woodpecker took longer than his neighbors to emerge from his nest. His neighboring home builders had left themselves large, open doorways. He had made his as small as possible. He could barely squirm through. When he finally popped out, he ruffled and smoothed his feathers. He gazed up at the newcomer to the neighborhood, the female.
She had arrived and sung out, presumably answering a male call she'd heard. She rested on a branch overlooking the homes built by the single males. Her plumage looked crisp. As she hopped to a higher branch, he saw her feathers shone with silver, black, and white in the pattern of a lacebark pine. The cap feathers on her head were dark. She had a silvery cockade stripe on the side, very attractive.
Although she looked no more than a year old, she gazed at the five roosts with a calculated eye. He felt his heart go out to her, seeing how she had judged the roosts and found them lacking. That was the right way, he felt.
"Over here," called one of his rival males. He had a beetle dangling from his beak. "Over here!"
"Hey pretty, hey pretty," called another.
The female puffed herself. Then she flew to a lower tree to reach the male who was offering her a beetle. She accepted his food. She leaned into the door of his home and inspected it. A moment later, she popped out and strutted along a branch away from him. She studied the others.
Finally, she spotted the latecomer. He stood straighter under the weight of her skeptical gaze. She watched him for a moment. She tilted her head. Her decision made, she fluttered over to him and alighted on a branch in his tree. Now that she was close, he could smell the old grove that had formerly been her home, a musty scent.
"I didn't realize there was another roost here," she said. "Where did you come from?"
He pointed with his beak in the direction of his door. The female studied the tree trunk a while before she spotted it. He had taken care to make his home as invisible as he could. He wondered if he would regret it. But he saw that she wasn't skeptical only about him. She was that way about everything.
He found that he liked it. Her cautiousness gave him hope.
"How long did this take you?" She flapped and hopped to a branch near the entrance. She peered in. "Oh, it's large!"
"I took my time," he said.
"May I go in?"
"Yes." He refrained from saying, 'I made it for you.' Even if he hoped this would soon be her home, it was his alone for now. She was polite to ask.
The female squeezed in through the door more easily than he did. He gave her a moment so her eyes could adjust. Then he clambered in to join her. She studied the nest at the bottom. Her stride took her to one of the pools of sap he had built along the sides. The smell of resin startled her, he saw. Her mouth fell open.
He felt he should apologize for how much protection he had built into his roost
"It's not that I can't defend us," he said. "My home was attacked when I was young. Hatchlings can't fly, so I was trapped with a snake. It climbed up from a lower branch. Then it ate my brothers. But it couldn't reach me or my sister through the ramp of sap my parents built."
"And so you have pools ready to pour down the sides of the tree. I have seen one before. But you have three."
"My father made a single reservoir. After he used it, the sap dried. And there was another snake." He gazed at the narrow entrance, which was the source of their limited light in the home. "There can be more than one snake."
She shivered.
"When I was young," she murmured to him. "A bobcat came to my nest. It could fit the whole front of its body through our door. It took all of my siblings it could reach, all in its claws. So fast."
He nodded. A great cat would do that, of course. It was amazing she had escaped.
"Yours is the first roost," she observed, "where I feel safe."
"Would you defend our home?" he asked. Suddenly, he felt this was an important question. In his heart, he had committed to her. Now he was struck by a sense of fear. He needed to know more about her. "Not from a bobcat, I mean. No one could."
"From a snake? A squirrel? A crow? Yes." She stood a little taller. "All of them, yes."
She shivered her feathers. Her gaze passed over the tiny, narrow door above and to her left. She hopped toward the northmost pool of sap and tapped it with her talons.
"You are better for the snake," she said.
"You are wiser for surviving the cat," he replied. "Sometimes these things make us better."
They gazed around the home in silence for a minute. She avoided catching his eye.
"This is very fine," she said. She pushed against him. She had to test him, he understood, to make sure his body was strong. He knew he was tough. He pushed back, prompting her to laugh. She hopped in a circle and returned to him. "Oh yes, this is very fine."
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