Brooklyn Bird Watch: April 21
As a former resident of Brooklyn now living in Florida, and a bird lover, I was pleased to see the excellent photo of the Downy Woodpecker by Heather Wolf featured in the Brooklyn Eagle’s “Bird Watch” series. The Scientific name is Picoides pubescens.
Your paper mentions that “Woodpeckers are constructed to absorb 97 percent of the shock energy of ‘pecking’ in their bodies, so the brain is protected…In addition to foraging for insects on tree trunks, they also have the power to carve out holes in the wood for shelter and nesting.”
On a Sunday morning recently my girlfriend and I were having some coffee and strolling through a local park when I heard a distinct and familiar sound in wooded areas of Florida. It was the rhythmic, muted tapping (or pecking I should say) of a Woodpecker. I had my camera with me so I followed the sound and near a picnic table on the underside of a large tree limb my girlfriend whispered, “there it is.” It was a Downy Woodpecker digging out a hole for a nest. I quietly climbed on top of the picnic table to get a closer view for a picture. This small bird, much more beautiful in real life than in the photo, would climb into the cavity it had dug in the tree limb and you could hear that powerful, rhythmic tapping and suddenly after a pause, small wood chips would come flying out of the hole, slung with a jerk of its head. Suddenly the bird would back out of the cavity and look around, apparently for predators, and then go back inside to work.
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.