Piliated Wood pecker

[ohiorganic]

Last Monday my husband, Eugene, and I were out working in he market garden around 10am and I noticed one of the dogs was going nuts and looked over and he was fighing a piliated woodpecker who, fortunately, was on the other side of a barbed wire fence. the bird was quite upset about the dog and for several minutes scolded him (as did I, we do not need a dog going afer rare birds, even if they are in his territory) while jumping from tree to tree in the fence line. Suddenly he piliated flew across he garden (about 1200') about 15 feet from my husband. It was really really cool to see.

[mbrown]

Woodpeckers are some of my favorite birds. We do not have any of the larger ones in our area but do have downy, red bellied and red headed woodpeckers. I have left a number of old hollow trees standing so they have plenty of easy nesting.

A few years ago I had a pair of red bellied nesting in a hollow tree in the front yard. One day I was sitting outside and they really started fussing. They began to swoop down toward the bottom of the tree. After a while I realized there was a snake trying to crawl up the tree. After about 15 minutes the birds won and the snake was gone.

Mike