Peckerwoods

Feather hammers, not white trash.

Memphis Tennessee/Southern Arizona

I spent countless hours as a boy wandering the woods with my 7x35 binoculars, my dented, surplus canteen and my Birds of North America Field Guide, watching birds, catching snakes and frogs, horned toads, cicadas, Luna moths and whenever possible, turtles. During summers when Dad was teaching at Ole Miss I was able to take this predilection for birdwatchin’ and critters with me for several glorious days, just me and him, attending Dad’s Mammalogy, Herpetology and Techniques in Field Zoology lectures and labs, as the spirit moved, and otherwise exploring both the beautiful campus and the woods and fields, beyond, when it didn’t. My fascination with birds grew quite naturally from seeds planted young, watered with freedom and adventure, and encouraged, again and again by smart, fun grown-ups who didn’t think of it as nerd-like or weird. A university biology department can be a wonderful place for a kid wired like I was who has access and permission to be there.

Summer session at Ole Miss

As I recall, it was Dad’s delightful summer landlady, Aunt Mert, there in Oxford who first familiarized me with the term ‘peckerwood’ as a poetic, colloquial revamping of the avian term I’d grown up with, ‘woodpecker’. Through her eternally smudged horn-rims, sweet-tea-stained smile and seventy-year-old Southern drawl, ‘peckerwoods’ became the chuckle-worthy descriptive my mind raced toward each time a stunning Red-headed Woodpecker undulated through a woodland opening and flared to a landing on the side of a towering oak tree.

“Why just this mornin’ when I was watering the pole beans out back one a them redhead peckerwoods swooped in and landed right on the side a that old shade oak by the fence.” her voice fluttered. “Well, I s’pose they’s a bunch a different kinds a peckerwoods round town, but my favorite’s, yes-suhhh, I have always been partial ta them redheads. So neat lookin’. So pretty, don’t you think?”

The only kind of peckerwoods I knew about as a kid in the South were the beautiful, mysterious ones with feathers. Apparently that is no longer the case.

from the Anti-Defamation League website:

“The word "peckerwood" originated as an African American slang term for "woodpecker" in the 1800s, but by the early 1900s began to be applied as a racial epithet against White people, with a meaning similar to the term ‘white trash.’“

In this day and age when we must be so careful of offending virtually everyone, I find myself reluctant to cede this colloquial term to the offense police, or to those who have co-opted it to mean something far less beautiful than I was taught, simply because…

I spent time last week with so many woodpeckers, whether in a forest of towering Saguaro cactus or all alone, miles up a mountain trail just after sunrise. Acorns, Arizonas, Gilas, Guilded Flickers, Ladder-backeds: peckerwoods, all. So many, so different, so much more abundant than in my normal woodland haunts here at home. I was in peckerwood heaven.

So, for what it’s worth and for your viewing pleasure, a handful of the stunningly beautiful woodpeckers encountered over the course of a week of hiking and contemplating, attempts to realign my inner compass, that same kid in a somewhat more geezerly stage gone blissful and walkabout in Southern Arizona.

Miss you like crazy, Dad.

A very calm, unflappable male Ladder-backed woodpecker who kept an eye on me, but otherwise didn’t seem to mind my company or near proximity over the better part of an hour... He allowed me to stand within a half-dozen feet of him two or three times while he calmly went about his business. Awe.

Male, Ladder-backed Woodpecker, (Dryobates scalaris)

This was the landscape for the Ladder-backed, above and the elegant Gila, below.

A handsome and curious, male, Gila Woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis)

Gila Woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis) perched on the side of an immense, Saguaro Cactus and flying past a female Ladder-backed Woodpecker, (Dryobates scalaris).

This male, Arizona Woodpecker was a delightful surprise during an early morning hike in the mountains. I came upon him working this dead tree at around 5400 ft. elevation, and less than a half-hour after sunrise.

The Arizona woodpecker, pictured above and the Acorn woodpecker just below were both temporary companions on this frosty, early morning walk along the flanks of a mountain. As you can see, the rising sun has not yet reached the trail here by this beautiful, Juniperus deppeana, ‘alligator juniper,’ but the air was warming noticeably and just another half mile or so, up the trail, in the warming sunlight, I met my first ever Arizona Woodpecker, the beautiful, chocolate brown male seen above.

One of a half dozen Acorn Woodpeckers encountered that morning. None of the others were willing to have their pictures taken.

Atop one of the towering Saguaros near the top center of this photo is a silhouetted, Guilded Flicker in early morning light. They sound quite a bit like the Northern Flickers we have in abundance here in the Northwest, but just different enough. You can see one of these flickers much closer in the image immediately below.

A Guilded Flicker clings to and Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens), branch that is just beginning to bloom. Early morning light near Saguaro National Park, West.