A Visit to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Sapsucker Woods and My First Pileated Woodpecker
Thursday night, a crescent moon glittered over New Jersey.
Splash of moon with your Hudson?
Up in Ithaca on Friday night, a child looked at the “tiny sliver slipper of a moon” hanging in the sky, and said triumphantly to his father, “See? I told you it would be a half-moon.”
“And what’s it going to be tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” said the child in the tone of a great expert, trying to take seriously an undergraduate’s question. “Probably full.”
I stopped by the legendary Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
The great Cornell Lab of Ornithology
A friendly resident Canada goose seemed to be the chief greeter.
Lab of O. greeter
He marched right up to the glass doors, and stared inside.
Hey, let me in.
Mallards and a single common merganser swam about the pond. A great blue heron spent much of the afternoon standing on his huge twiggy nest atop a dead tree. Red-tailed hawks circled low time and again. Deep in Sapsucker Woods, nuthatches, hairy woodpeckers and a brown creeper hunted on tree trunks.
The woods looked like a Northeastern version of an East Texas mangrove swamp
Someone had unrolled a plush green carpet of moss in front of a perfect little doorway.
Elf home
Someone else had built a cairn or shrine, reminding me of Easter Island on the Hudson.
Balancing act
And a dream came true when a great dinosaur of a bird, a Pileated woodpecker, swooped over my head and landed on a tree trunk to hunt and drum.
Pileated woodpecker by New Jersey Birds http://www.flickr.com/photos/pazzani
The Lab and its woods are extraordinary places, full of birds, open and welcoming to all. They’ll even lend you binoculars, no questions asked.
I’m home in my beautiful city again, watching the drizzle and listening to pigeons lowing like cows. Thanks for having me, Sapsucker Woods.
Tags: Canada goose, cornell lab of ornithology, crescent moon, Ithaca NY, pileated woodpecker, sapsucker woods, woods in spring
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
March 31, 2010 at 8:05 pm
[...] A Visit to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Sapsucker Woods and My First Pileated Woodpecker &laqu… [...]
March 23, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Sweet! One of the species that you’re not very likely to see in NYC. I still await my life-sighting of one.
March 23, 2010 at 4:26 pm
I just found out we had pileateds in Connecticut, where I lived for several years as a little kid, but I have no memory of them whatsoever. So my Ithaca bird still counts as a first.
March 23, 2010 at 11:32 am
That woodpecker does look like a dinosaur….i wonder when it was first spotted. and talking about that, does anyone know if they ever saw the ivory-billed woodpecker again after that first sighting a half dozen years ago?
March 22, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Pileated. Woodpecker.
I am dying from jealousy here.
March 22, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Yes, I was pretty thrilled. Still am, actually.
March 22, 2010 at 5:47 pm
I can’t remember my first pileated woodpecker. I grew up in the middle of forests that were full of them.
The old-timers called them “Indian hens.”
But I always knew the real animal behind Woody Woodpecker.
March 22, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Indian hens, eh? I like it. Where was this, Retrieverman? How amazing to find pileated woodpeckers just business as usual.