Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters

Three-toed Woodpecker

Three-toed Woodpecker 86 Three-toedWoodpecker Three inches off the ground,clipped to the side of a fir tree, chiseling out a hole the size of a dime, a male three-toed woodpecker jackhammers a Morse code through the forest. It is February,ten below,the little bird a wedge of yin-yang black folded on white. He is the size of a diminutive robin, his face striped, fierce, intense like a badger’s, white markings zebraing behind oil-drop eyes. A scarf of white feathers is tossed over his shoulders and on his forehead is a bright yellow oval the color of egg yolk.With a woodworker’s intensity, the tiny woodpecker raps and then studies,raps and then studies,spiraling counterclockwise up and then down the base of the tree. When he throws his face at the tree it’s a fierce swing, like a hatchet coming down. Compared to his body, his tail is long,V-ed as sharply as a swallow’s and braced like a third foot against the trunk of the tree. In the stilled forest his rappings are like tiny gunshots. Now he whips his face over his shoulder and blinks in a fluttering succession, pulling his eyelids front to back. His eyes are dished, reflective, perfect black circles like olives screwed into his head. All afternoon I follow this little bird from tree to tree, kneeling in the squeaking snow,blowing on my cold hands,my note book lying open on my knees. As I watch he alternates his strikes side to side, angling them in at forty-five degrees until another piece of bark is ejected. He gobbles larvae as he goes, white grains snatched up like sushi rice. In the end he Wild Delicate Seconds 87 leaps and whizzes away,zigzagging through the avenue of trees, wings whirring like tiny electric motors turned on. In his absence I’m left with a little sunshine, a little silence, a little snow drifting down–and the question:when,if not now, if not ever, will my life be deemed a success? 88 ...