Life at the cabin and the bus trip

The woodpecker couple who patched things up

4 min

Sitting with her morning coffee, Agnes watches a male woodpecker drum on an electric pole and wait for an answer from a swamp. When his mate finally flies in, he feeds her a worm, and Agnes decides there is 'no more trouble between husband and wife.' She finishes by saying how much pleasure she gets from watching and figuring out nature.

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What Agnes says

Words in light grey italics were hard to hear, so they may not be exact.

Alone, this one big, he must have been a male, it was a great big one. And, oh, just, I would say, about three rods away from me. He tackled an electric pole. And he was diddy, diddy dot in there to beat the vent.

And I was drinking my coffee, and I said, well, somebody is up beside me, you know. And he kept on doing that. And first thing, you know, I've heard a little answer. with about four, five d -d -d -d -d -d -d -d, you know, dats against a tree.

And like the flesh, it come to my mind. It must be his female, you know, because then all of a sudden he went da -da -da -da -da -da in a hurry, you know, five, six, seven dadas. And then he stopped and listened.

And I listened, and sure enough, two or three dadaats comes from a swamp, practically across the whole 40 I said, boy, she don't want to mind him or something is wrong and as I watched he went real fast da -da -da -da -da -da -da you know and then nothing answered I said well she's getting fed up with him bossing her around like that and here she comes about to maybe 10, 50, feet from the ground, low, very low, she was flying towards him.

And she landed about six, seven inches below him on the post, see. And he went around the post twice with his holding onto the post with his feet. He just whir it around, you know. And he come and lowered himself down the pole, up to her, and he gave her a peck on my head.

Then he went a little bit higher, about maybe four or five inches higher, and he start pecking into a hole and pulls out a white warm, maybe an inch long or something, and he offered it to her. He made this two, three inches down with his feet, with a warm in his beak, and he offered it to her and she opened her beak and swallowed it then they both went around and around that they're looking for holes there are some more worms listening if there's other worms making noises in the thing and they were on the best of harmony so I says well everything is

fine and dandy and it didn't take them long and they flew back where she come from from where Johnny my son's got a trout tank or trout pool for trouts, you know. And I said to myself, well, there is no more trouble between the husband and wife.

And next day, by golly, if they didn't come back and then practically the same thing. And they were doing it for several days. Then finally they moved to a different post and a little further out, you know what.

I didn't pay no more attention. I had other things to do, plant my garden and stuff. But I thought that was kind of cute. It must have been what I was thinking, husband and wife, and he was scolding her that she didn't want to get up.

And finally she got up and went to him, and that's what happened. So stuff like that, I just love to watch and think of, you know, and kind of figure out things and that. And I get a certain amount of pleasure from that.