My Encounter with a Woodpecker Family

For more than 20 years, I had never seen a single woodpecker visit my garden, which is like a small forest. Kingfishers and owls, yes—but never a woodpecker.

Over the past few weeks, I have been watching a woodpecker family appear in my garden. They even made a hole in a tree, and I saw young woodpeckers living inside it! It has now been more than a week since they disappeared. I am not sure whether woodpeckers are migratory birds.

To me, being able to watch woodpeckers up close—sometimes only 10 feet away—on many mornings and evenings was simply unforgettable. I watched them fly, cling to tree trunks just as woodpeckers do, and drill holes in search of food. It was a remarkable experience.

The first time I saw one was several weeks ago on a morning when I was not wearing my glasses. I faintly noticed a bird clinging to a tree in my backyard. I immediately thought it might be a woodpecker because I had never seen any other bird pose that way. So I concluded that it must be a woodpecker, and it turned out that I was right! It was a woodpecker family raising their young in the hole they had made.

The sounds of woodpeckers are adorable and also quite loud at times. I have heard three different kinds of sounds from them. One is the soft sound they make while flying, almost like cotton or a cloud moving through the air. Another is a quiet sound, like whispering, as if the bird is talking to itself. The third is a very loud call that almost sounds like a scream. Three different kinds of sounds from a single species of woodpecker! What a blessing it has been to observe and study the life of a woodpecker family!