Archaeology & People
View allAll Photos Tagged excavation
A male pileated woodpecker excavating part of a large log lying across a small stream. He appears to have drawn his head back to prepare for his next strike.
I was photographing a pair of chickadees and was wondering why they were staying at a single tree for such a long amount of time. When the female flew into a cavity in this red alder, it all started to make sense. The female chickadee was considering this as a potential nesting site!
Chickadees are cavity nesters. They may excavate their own nests or use cavities previously excavated by woodpeckers. Nevertheless, it is habitual for them to remove wood shavings, even if the "cavity" is already complete (as in nest boxes). This female chickadee is doing just that.
I really hope this pair will settle down in this nesting. However, when I returned to the site later that evening, the chickadees were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they will return later after considering other nesting sites. Wherever they are, I hope they will raise a successful brood.
I haven't posted anything for a few weeks as things have been very hectic for us. Here's an image of a male Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker excavating a potential nest hole.
I had seen the male and female together on this tree as I was walking along a trail. I stopped well back and after a they flew off I positioned myself in the brush a distance away and waited to see it they would return.
Image created on June 11, 2017 in the Marlborough Forest southwest of Ottawa.
From December, 2008; four years before I joined Flickr.
This one is for Jason Hendricks, with thanks.
If you look hard enough you may find one, too.
SEVENTY-SIX
“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”
Sigmund Freud
11 days to Halloween!
Sand flying from the hole as this sand martin digs into the cliff at Happisburgh, Norfolk. D500_83416.NEF