Are your neighbors taking down trees? Salvage the dead wood and place it around your garden. You just might get a royal visit from a pileated woodpecker.
The chainsaws started at 7:15 on the last Saturday morning of March, followed by shredders at 7:30. It should have been a day of rest for us, but I was more concerned about the noise drowning out the birds, who were just starting to clear their throats for their morning roll call.
Our next-door neighbor is afraid of trees falling on his house, even though the possibility is remote. I fear the opposite: human households and developments decimating trees and taking away the bedrooms and pantries and rooftops of our wild friends. I also worry about the effects of the grinding, soul-crushing sounds on animals’ abilities to nest, rest and even hear themselves talk.
The weekend before had been different, a rare quiet moment when trees were too wet to cut yet and grass was too short to mow. That Sunday, the only traffic was at the birdbath, where mockingbirds held court as their more timid counterparts queued up on surrounding branches. Writing from a cozy vantage point by the front window, I looked out occasionally to admire them and take pictures. This has become routine for us, the birds and me, even though I’m the only one who knows it.
Just as I was getting ready to abandon my station, someone large and in charge flew into view: a pileated woodpecker. We hear him often. Once, many years ago, we even got a fuzzy flip-phone video of a pileated pulling apart a stump by the road. But I’d never had a chance to observe one up close. That morning I had many chances: The flowerbed near the front door would be just one in a series of stops on the woodpecker’s stump tour of our whole garden.
Those stumps were actually pieces of aging trunk we’d collected from another neighbor, who’d chopped up a perfectly healthy ash to appease a guy complaining about the overhanging branches touching his oversized RV. Making the best of a bad situation, we rolled bits of the once vibrant tree’s carcass down the street and into our habitat. They stand as sentinels, protecting our milkweed patch from county maintenance crews, marking the entrances to paths, and creating pedestals for containers. Most of all, they feed the birds — and the fungi, beetles, ants, caterpillars and cavity-nesting bees who make their homes there too.
In our two-acre plot, pileated woodpeckers can easily find all the delectable side dishes on their official preferred menu, including the fruits of greenbrier, hackberry, sassafras, sumacs, poison ivy, hollies, dogwoods, persimmons, brambles and elderberries. But their main dish — carpenter ants — is also in abundant supply, along with beetle larvae and other insects, because of the dead wood we nurture.
Woodpeckers we have known include (clockwise from top left): a northern flicker, red-bellied woodpecker, downy woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, yellow-bellied sapsucker, and another downy woodpecker.
Last week, after making the final blows to his row of pine trees, my neighbor told me he’s spotted five woodpecker species at his feeder. But feeders are not what woodpeckers need most. They need insects for themselves and their young, and those insects in turn need dead wood for nesting and native plants they’ve evolved to eat. And without standing dead and dying trees — none of which exist in my neighbor’s yard — there would be no place for woodpeckers to excavate holes large enough to raise their families.
Though I may never be able to help some residents of my community understand how to be truly neighborly toward woodpeckers, I’m thankful they’re interested in being neighborly toward me—because I can pass that graciousness on to my wild friends. Just before the latest tree-chopping endeavor, I got a call from next door inquiring if I wanted any wood chips. Yes, please! I said, already making mental notes for how they would help me regenerate more woodland. Not only do I want wood chips, but can I have some of the logs, too?
Not for the first time, I explained the value of dead wood, hoping my neighbor would be moved by the story of a downy woodpecker we’d recently seen dining on branches lining our front pathway. He wasn’t, as far as I could tell. But at least I tried, and at least my neighbors have heard enough to know that I might be willing to pick up the pieces of the destruction wrought on our community of late. And though my acceptance of the shredded pine carcass makes me feel complicit in the tree’s untimely death, at least I can honor her memory by creating new areas for more plants to grow, thrive and eventually crumble back into the earth, feeding and sheltering more woodpeckers along the way.
(Photos by Nancy Lawson and Will Heinz)
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Nice one, Nancy! Outside our bathroom window we have been watching a male red bellied excavate a new hole in one snag after the female chose which spot she liked the best. Rarely see them now because they are nesting. But a male flicker is guarding a larger existing hole a couple of trunks away. Such drama on our little 1/8 acre in the middle of Bethesda because we cherish our snags.
Hi Marney! Wow, that is so sweet! A woodpecker paradise. I can’t wait to see your place some day when we can all interact up close again. 🙂
Good for you. Used to live in Chevy Chase. Now in my home
Town of Cincinnati with an acre and a half, tons of trees, many White Oaks and lots of wildlife. I am converting our land into native plants and trees. I have a thriving butterfly garden and many birds. Can’t read enough of this stuff. I have found my passion during COVID.
As I read your post (beautifully written, as always), I could hear a chainsaw in the distance. The sound always make me sad but determined to maintain the valuable habitats on my own Catskill Mt. property as best I can. Although the winter winds up here took down too many branches, the large dead maple still stands. May it serve well as a shelter for a few more years.
Thanks, Diane! I can so relate — it is so sad to hear all the machines, but it is also motivation to keep doing everything we can to counteract the destruction. Your dead maple tree must be home to so many creatures.
Back when I lived on an acre of mountainside surrounded mostly by woods, I, too rolled stumps from other neighbors’ former trees, using them to line the areas of my yard that bordered lawn from forest (this was before I had heard of Nancy Lawson or the “Humane Gardener”, and had far too much grass lawn. Oh, how I would do things differently today!)
I made some rustic benches out of some of the bigger stumps, hammering planks across two apiece, creating casual places on my decks to sit for the few visitors who came so far up the mountain. I even brought one beautiful oak specimen inside for my cats to scratch on, but for some reason they weren’t interested; instead preferring their existing carpet-covered kitty condos. It was just as well, since I found that it still attracted fungi, and was better off outside.
I placed the final few in my gardens along with what large rocks I could roll home, instinctively wanting the landscaping to appear as natural as possible. Of course it never really was, as I had no idea at that time of what to plant, and simply chose random plants that looked nice to me at the nursery. The local deer helped me decide by munching on some of my choices and leaving others alone.
Now I live in a townhouse with a tiny back yard where the gardening is mostly dictated by the whims of an HOA, who are more interested in things like conformity and resale values than wildlife.
I miss my stumps.
Hi Dave! What a good idea to also make benches out of them. It’s funny that your kitties didn’t like them, but that was a good thought to try it. I’m sorry you live in a place where it sounds like you may not be allowed to do this. Would they let you if you put a pot on top or made a bench out of the logs again? Or if you lined beds with branches? I know some HOAs are more accepting than others, but sometimes you can make these things look almost formal.
Nancy,
Yes, I could probably make a little bench out of some stumps, but there is nowhere to put it except in our tiny back yard, where we already have one.
There is a patch of woods down the street where they occasionally cut trees down for forest management, and leave the stumps. After reading your article, i I got one the other day and set it in the front garden next to the bird feeders; it’ll make a nice elevated perch for them, and and place to put corn for the deer who come at night.
I may get some branches as well to put in the garden for wildlife (that’s a good idea), but that may be pushing the HOA— they watch for things like that! Probably the best thing I can do is try planting as much variety as I can.
Thanks for your inspiration!
It’s always so refreshing to see your posts. It can be difficult when no one shares your views on the importance of wildlife. I deal with this all the time and I am so glad you are doing this.
Hi Katrina! Thank you. I’m so happy they are a helpful break for you from the constant negative barrage about wildlife. It is always refreshing for me to be able to talk and message with others like you who care and are actively trying to help as well! There are more of us than it would seem, but the problem is that destruction takes no time at all, whereas nurturing and growing is a process. So the very timeframe makes it feel as if we are outnumbered.
I thought I knew all the tricks, but did not know that our stumps should be stood on end. Thank you for that! We’ll get to work on it.
It’s always SO heartwarming to read your pieces, and the comments. Each of us feels alone at times, but we can come here and know there are kindred spirits. Love and peace to you all!
I bet the logs would also be attractive sideways — we do see lots of evidence of woodpecker activity on one that we turned on its side for reasons I can’t remember now. Thank you so much – I’m so glad you are helped by the posts and the community we have here. I am too. It is inspiring to connect with all of you. <3
Loved the video. We have a crosscut section of a big old maple that we set out in the back garden. It’s slowly decomposing, and there are signs of bird and insect activity.
Hi Jason, three of your comments on old posts were sitting in a purgatory I just found. I bet by now that maple is full of tons more life! 🙂
Inspiring, Nancy! Beautiful photos. I’ll always remember ‘making the best of a bad situation.’ When we arrived here, some trees had been cut down but we left them in their place. S,o they’re now home for tiny and bigger animals- as well as being a welcoming spot for taking a break.
I love that. The ultimate cozy hiding place. 🙂
I love your posts more than you’ll ever know, but I think you’ve outdone yourself with this one, Nancy!
Hi Susan! Thank you so much. It makes me so happy to hear this – it was kind of a new experiment! Yesterday a little downy woodpecker – maybe the same one? – came back to that same branch by the front pathway for dinner. There must be quite the meal in there! 🙂
Beautiful woodpecker!!!!
I really appreciate this post. I recently bought a condo and was excited to have two trees to hang a hammock between, plus a smaller dead tree right outside my window. When I made an offer on the house I could see signs that a woodpecker lived there and I was looking forward to bird watching. After I closed on the house and got the keys, I came over to find all 3 trees had been taken down by the condo association. It made me so sad and then eventually angry. Plus I see the poor cottonwood carcasses just laying in the woods every time I leave and it makes me want to cry. I got into it with the condo association but legally there is nothing I can do, and I also can’t replant the trees.
But your article gives me hope! If I am able to find someone to help me upright some of the old tree, the woodpecker could still use it. I doubt I could drag it back to my yard (due to both the HOA rules and that the pieces are not easily moveable). But if I am able to upend the old pieces, I like to think that the woodpecker can come back! Thanks for helping me to see the bright side and make the best out of what seems like a depressing situation.
I’m grieving the tremendous number of trees lost here in Helene territory in WNC. We had a giant oak go over. We had it cut where it covered a path but left the pieces around in the woods for Mama Nature to use. Another tree that it hit on the way down was left as a standing snag. Life carries on amid the tears.
This heartfelt story beautifully highlights the interconnectedness of nature and the importance of preserving habitats for wildlife. Your dedication to repurposing dead wood and nurturing biodiversity is inspiring!