I never imagined that hearing a noise that sounds like a jackhammer would bring me any measure of pleasure. But that’s what has happened in the case of a certain woodpecker who has found a section of my exterior house wall, beneath the apex of the roof, to be perfect for hammering out his lovelorn message.
BRRRRRAT-A-TAT-TAT goes his plaintive pounding, and I smile appreciatively while sitting in my living room recliner. At first, this audio intrusion annoyed me, especially when it occurred about an hour or two before I was ready to arise from bed in the morning. A couple of times, I went outside and hazed the offender away.
I wondered why a woodpecker would choose to bang away at a section of galvanized metal or painted siding, neither of which would contain anything edible. “Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds” said that this, ornithologically classified, is probably a Williamson’s sapsucker because its coloring is black and white with a red throat. It could be a red-naped sapsucker, but I am no Audubon-type expert. It’s a noisy sucker, I know that for sure.
Further, I learned from another source that the bird’s hammering is not just an effort to rouse a late sleeper. Rather, it is his way of announcing to others in the woodpecker populace — specifically, the female contingent — that he is around and available for courtship, maybe even for a serious relationship.
Vaguely recollecting my own youthful courtship days, far distant as they are in my checkered past, I mustered some empathy for the pesky woodpecker. If there was no response to his lonely salutations, did he fly away in abject rejection, like a bachelor snubbed in a singles bar or stood up on what he thought was a potentially hot date?
If the reader is waiting patiently for a point to these musings, I guess it is this: We, in our suburban enclaves, can be affected by something as sizeable as a coyote — maybe even a bear or a mountain lion — or as small as a bird. But the more we know about our wildlife neighbors — and they are becoming a more integral factor in our lives as we move ourselves and our abodes increasingly into their habitats — the more likely we are to understand and appreciate them. And to deal successfully and co-exist with them.
As the former, longtime writer and editor of fishing, hunting and wildlife-management topics for this newspaper, I spent a good deal of my time pursuing wild, game-animal and game-bird species, and then writing about it. That didn’t include, of course, woodpeckers or a long list of other species that are protected, or those that I wouldn’t have hunted even though they weren’t protected.
This intimacy with wild things — and as harsh as it sounds, there is nothing more intimate in the outdoor world than the relationship between predator and prey — taught me a deep respect for their resourcefulness, adaptability and survivability, even in the face of hunting pressure and inexorable human encroachment on their range. After all, they have their imperatives, just as we have ours.
Not long ago, my daughter lost a beloved pet cat to a neighborhood fox that eviscerated and partly consumed the feline. I sympathized with her helpless feeling of loss and initial outrage, but she ultimately understood that the fox was only doing what foxes must do.
Co-existence with wildlife requires a bit of common sense, which the less enlightened among us forswear when they do silly if well-meaning things like put out food handouts for foxes and coyotes and even, in some instances, bears and mountain lions. It always leads to trouble, both for the animal and the people near it.
It is not our job to sustain them with unnatural props. It is our obligation to respect them. In the worst scenarios, we must do what we lawfully can to protect ourselves, our children, our property and our pets from wildlife-caused damage and danger. Every farmer who has had his crop shredded by wildlife and every rancher who has had his hay, his calves or his lambs eaten by wildlife understands the precept perfectly. A suburban housewife who has seen her pets or even her children stalked by coyotes understands the same thing.
But there is also something involved here called tolerance. Like smiling when you hear the woodpecker.
But I do hope he finds a playmate soon.
Bob Saile is author of “Trout Country” (Pruett Publishing, 1999) and “The Sultan of Spring” (Lyons Press, 1998).
