Three Thanksgivings Past
Pileated Woodpeckers feature in all!
(Listen to the radio version here.)
Last year on November 9, two days before my 72nd birthday, I found out I had invasive breast cancer, so I spent last Thanksgiving as scared and anxious as I’ve been since my first child was hospitalized as a baby four decades ago. (Spoiler alert: We both ended up fine.)
I tried to take the long view on last year’s Thanksgiving blogpost:
Despite what I’m dealing with right this very minute, I can’t help but remember that there are almost 38 million minutes in 72 years, and many millions of those minutes have been extremely joyful, making me a genuine multimillionaire in the only way that really matters. And that’s a lot to be thankful for.
My family and friends have given me much of that happiness, as have birds. During the weeks before my December 1 surgery, including on Thanksgiving, one of my daily joys was seeing BB, the banded male Pileated Woodpecker who visits my yard a lot. I don’t get to personally know that many wild bird individuals, but BB is one I know and cherish, and I particularly associate him with Thanksgiving. And a few days after my surgery, when I could lift my camera again, he was the first thing I photographed.
But the Thanksgiving I most associate with BB was in 2021. That whole month of November I had an extremely rare hummingbird visiting.
A sprinkling of red feathers on her throat established that she was an adult female, and some of my closeup photos of her tail, despite being out of focus, confirmed that she was a Rufous Hummingbird.
To get closeups without scaring her off, I set a hummingbird feeder in the tray feeder at my office window, and most days I spent at least a little time watching with the window wide open.
While I waited for her, I photographed other backyard birds. One male Pileated Woodpecker was extremely cooperative.
As I studied my photos of him, I discovered that he was wearing a leg band. At any given angle, you can only read about 3 digits of the 9-digit band number. Photos showing the band’s seam helped me figure out the first and last digits, and over about a week, I worked out the entire number (#115423658).
It turned out that BB (for Banded Boy) was banded by Frank Nicoletti at Hawk Ridge as a first-year bird in 2020, making him just a few months older than my grandson Walter.
So that Thanksgiving I had both a really cool Pileated Woodpecker and a very rare Rufous Hummingbird, as well as a wonderful 1-year-old grandson to savor. The hummingbird left at midday on December 4, breaking the latest date ever for a Rufous Hummingbird in the state. Three years later, BB and Water are still coming regularly. I made a short video of BB visiting my bird bath this week—he first had to crack the ice on top, but I didn’t start the video in time to get that.
The Rufous Hummingbird I was enjoying on Thanksgiving 2021 was not the first one I’d ever seen in my yard. An adult female showed up on November 16, 2004—the first one ever seen in St. Louis County. At the time, that fall date was the latest a Rufous had ever seen in the state.
That was back when digital cameras were primitive compared to now, and no one got photos definitive enough to confirm that she might not be an Allen’s Hummingbird, so the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union calls her Selasphorus sp. Either way, it was amazing to have her here—she stuck around until mid-morning December 3.
Thanks to spending so much time looking out my window to photograph her that November, I started noticing a male Pileated Woodpecker coming to my yard. Back then, this was unusual. But I didn’t even try to photograph him through the closed window until he started visiting a suet feeder.
The room I was using as my home office back then had crank-out windows. Since the feeder was on the outside of the window, I couldn’t get a good angle for photos with the window open. But on December 2, during a fierce blizzard, I opened one window for a few hours with a hummingbird feeder set up indoors in case she wanted to feed out of the snow and wind. She did fly in once and fed at the feeder hanging from the inside of the window.
After pigging out, she rose to the center of the room just below the ceiling, hovered in a circle, looking all around, and then zoomed out the window snickering, “Well she’s no Martha Stewart!” Like Huck Finn, she was a little curious but had no intention of getting “sivilized.”
But during the time that window was open, my neighborhood Pileated Woodpecker flew to the box elder tree right next to the window, giving me clear, unobstructed views of him and allowing me to take what was for many years the best Pileated Woodpecker photos I’d ever taken.
This is why rare hummingbirds and Pileated Woodpeckers are woven together with Thanksgivings for me. I didn’t see a late hummingbird this year, but did see BB on Thanksgiving. I seem to be completely healed from last year’s bout with cancer, my family is doing well, and the night before Thanksgiving, I got word that Wisdom, the famous Laysan Albatross on Midway Island, who happens to be the only wild bird known to be older than me (she’s at least 74 now!), returned to her nesting island again.
How grateful I am to be living on the only planet in the known universe with birds! However dark the day, birds have always brought me joy and light. Sojourner Truth said, “I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.” I’m holding onto that thought.
ENJOY, SO MUCH, YOUR WORDS ABOUT THE BIRDS, WE HAVE LIVED IN THREE OTHER STATES AND OUR BIRD FEEDERS ALWAYS CAME WITH US.. KEEP UP YOUR WONDERFUL WORK. TAKING PICTURES OF BIRDS AND WRITING ABOUT YOUR LIFE WITH THEM.
Happy belated birthday!