Posts Tagged ‘Bell Covered Bridge’
woodpeckers and covered bridges
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Woodpeckers are common in our area. Both Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers visit our feeders in winter. Pileated Woodpeckers hammer on our trees in summer, their flaming heads a blur as they excavate dead trees for insects.
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Woodpeckers don’t confine their tapping to dead trees. I have seen them pounding on telephone poles, metal roof flashing and even the shingles on the side of our house.
Lately, as a result of a project I am planning, I have been thinking about covered bridges and their use as wild life habitat. So, a question …
Do woodpeckers excavate the wood of covered bridges for food?
Last week, we visited three covered bridges in Sunbury County in New Brunswick and, in two of them, we found the answer …
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woodpecker holes in the soffit at the gable end of the Smyth Covered Bridge near Mill Settlement, Sunbury County (April 2015)
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old woodpecker excavations on the face of the Bell Covered Bridge near Juvenile Settlement, Sunbury County (April 2015).
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woodpecker holes inside the Bell Covered Bridge (April 2015)
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I would love to be in a covered bridge when a woodpecker comes to play his staccato song.
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Copyright 2015 Jane Tims
in the shelter of the covered bridge – drip line
clear and amber water of the South Oromocto River
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Drip line
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slices river into upstream
and down, opaque and transparent,
dead calm and riffle, dark and light.
As water and air are cut
by meniscus, erratic in rain,
as her voice slips past present tense,
concentric rings expand. Three trout
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and gravels, perpendicular
rocks, embedded in amber. Rain
disconnects today from yesterday,
slips from the roof of the covered
bridge, slides from edge, corrugated
steel, sheet of rain, crosses river
linear, liminal, shore to shore.
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Copyright 2015 Jane Tims
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Bell Bridge, South Branch Oromocto River
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