BB Reappears

My Boyfriend's Back!

(Listen to the radio version here.)

For the past decade or so, I’ve enjoyed more than my share of Pileated Woodpeckers in my backyard, and ever since 2021, when I noticed that one male Pileated Woodpecker had a band on his leg, I’ve been paying even closer attention to these magnificent birds. During the nesting seasons in both 2023 and 2024, during the time he’d be incubating eggs and feeding nestlings, BB, my “Banded Boy,” showed up less regularly but I’d still see him once or twice a week. Whenever a male Pileated appeared, we’d check for a band because a non-banded male Pileated was also visiting regularly, as were one or two females.

Last December, when a Cooper’s Hawk showed up here, BB disappeared for a couple of weeks. I wrote about it, and about his reappearance. But on January 24, the Cooper’s Hawk came back while all three of my Pileateds were here, and all three disappeared. This was apparently the last straw for them. I once saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk chasing a female Pileated for at least 15 minutes, and it almost got her. Cooper’s Hawks are bigger and stronger, and I think my neighborhood suddenly seemed too dangerous.

The Cooper’s Hawk stuck around for a few days, but I didn’t see or hear any evidence of BB throughout the rest of January, all of February, March, and April, and the first 30 days of May. (I was gone for over a week each in February, April, and May, but Russ and Tom kept track for me.) If I thought he had died when he disappeared for two weeks, you can imagine how I felt when he was gone for over four months.

But then on May 31, there he was, handsome as ever.

This photo is from June 6, a week after he first showed up, and he’s still handsome!!

He obviously has plenty of other places to spend his time, but since then, at least through Sunday, June 8, he’s appeared two or three times every day, and I’m elated—so much so that every time I see him, a song from 1963, back when I was in elementary school, pops into my head:

He's been gone for such a long time.
(Hey-la, hey-la my boyfriend's back)
Now he's back and things’ll be fine.
(Hey-la, hey-la my boyfriend's back).

BB is probably nesting somewhere in the neighborhood. He’s been coming in the evening, well before it gets dark but late enough that he may be stoking up for night duty. (During daytime, both Pileateds take turns with incubating eggs and brooding tiny nestlings, but Dad invariably does the work at night.)

I’m still hoping I can find out where his nest is, but meanwhile, my neighbor Jeanne Tonkin found the nest of the Red-headed Woodpeckers who’ve been visiting my yard so much lately. It’s in a big dead limb of a cottonwood four blocks down on Peabody Street. Yesterday, I got photos of both birds—one inside the cavity and one delivering food.

That’s extremely exciting—Red-headed Woodpeckers are a new bird on the Duluth nesting scene—well, since we’ve been living here. But as happy as I am about them, nothing can exceed my joy about BB. Hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend’s back!