Woodpecker Stake

In March, the sound carries farther than the bird.

The drumming starts before the leaves do. A fast, hard roll on a dead limb — or on a gutter, or a section of aluminum flashing, which they seem to prefer for the volume. You will hear it from inside the house and go to the window and see nothing, because the bird is on the far side of the trunk.

That is not feeding, by the way. The drumming in spring is announcement. It is how a woodpecker states a claim and calls for a mate, and the loudest surface available usually wins.

We had this one cut clinging upright, tail braced against the bark, which is how the bird spends nearly all of its life.

The anatomy is the remarkable part. A woodpecker may strike a tree many thousands of times in a day. Its tongue is long, barbed at the tip and sticky, and when it is not in use it retracts back through the mouth and wraps up and around the back of the skull. There is no other arrangement quite like it among birds.

Set this one flush against a tree trunk, a fence post, or the side of a shed — vertical, the way you always find them.

Specifications