I heard a thwacking sound, looked up from the porch desk, and two pileated woodpeckers were on two, then one, pine tree.

Two pileated woodpeckers on a pine tree

The crosshatching is the porch screen wire.

These Dryocopus pileatus hang around here all the time, but they don’t usually come that close. That pine tree stob is about twenty feet outside the screen, or thirty (ten meters) from where I was sitting.

Eventually they flew off laughing, like they do.

Pileated woodpeckers mate for life, which would explain why this pair has been here a long time.

Don’t know if it’s always been the same pair, since we’ve been seeing them more than a decade, and apparently the oldest know was less than thirteen years old.

A pair of pileateds wants more than a hundred acres of territory, so they should be very happy here.

-jsq