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house on which the metal is ‘ attached are often jolted awake j in the early morning by the. sound of a woodpecker drilling^ on a gutter.
Drilling for food is not the., only kind of work performed.' by woodpeckers. Deep nesting’ cavities - narrow at the top, broad and bowl-shaped at the ' bottom, - are excavated for not only a place to deposit a clutch of pure white eggs but for snug ' sleeping chambers. "
Speckled, thus camouflaged, eggs offer a degree of protection from detection by' predators of birds building open, cup-shaped nests in shrubs and trees. Large' clutches of white eggs are laid by female woodpeckers that have no need for protective coloration because they are deep within a nest cavity. The only nest is the soft wood chips?at the bottom of the goardshaped nest. Females incubate., during the day, males at nightj when the female is resting in» her own sleeping cavity.
On hatching, nestling woodpeckers are little more than blind embryos, devoid of • feathers. These young are fed . on a steady diet of partially, digested insects by the attentive parents that pump foodinto the mouths of hungry, young. The nestlings grow and. develop rapidly. They are a noisy, aggressive lot and areready to leave the secure pro-, tection of the nest cavity in 28 to 30 days. Young woodpeckers, spend a long time getting ready for life in the outside world. For. this reason they raise only one. brood a season and produce a, large clutch of eggs that are - in - a sense - all in one basket.
Once I was walking in the June woods when I heart} what I assumed was the hum of a hive of bees. My curiosity overcame my fear of multiple stings and I discovered the, humming noise was coming from a nest full of hungry Flickers. It occurred to me that few predators - a snake, raccoon, jay or hungry crow - would brave a swarm of angry bees. What a remarkable illusion to prevent predation!
Note: The “Memories” col-.. umn continues with this selection from Oct. 21, 1998.
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