This was going to be a story about pileated woodpeckers. But then historical events intervened, and I couldn’t ignore them. We’ll get to the woodpeckers, I promise, but first we’ve got a journey ahead of us…
The hot March winds buffet the jet as we thunder skyward, shattering the quiet of the dry tropical forest below and spewing hot gases of ancient sea life. I crane my head and say a silent goodbye to the Huatulco landscape that has become a second home to me. We’ve already rocketed higher than the Cerro Huatulco; the dry course of the Arroyo Todos Santos slips by in an instant and then we’re banking towards the coast, a wide wide turn over the tierra natal of my partner and generations of her family. Goodbye for now, my loved ones, que Dios los cuide.
Santa María Huatulco is out of sight now, but I left part of my soul in the tiny garden in front of our house, and I know Carito and our family will keep it watered while I’m gone. The tomatoes are still green, but we harvested epazote this morning before we had to go to the airport, and yesterday I planted sugarcane from grandfather Teo in a crate along the street.
Saying goodbye
Banking, the jet keeps banking, then levels out again, paralleling the coast. The water has dropped even more in the Laguna El Zarzal, where I watched a black-bellied plover (Pluvialis squatarola) on the mudflats in December, within the protective circle of the mangroves. We race over La Crucecita and all of the tourist hotels and sprawl of Bahías de Huatulco, the golf course at Tangolunda, the mouth of the Río Copalita where the collared plovers (Anarynchus collaris) hide in the sand.
We bank again and the landscape keeps shrinking into anonymity as we set course towards Ciudad de México and points north. By the wee hours of the morning, if all goes well, I’ll be in Missoula, Montana. I keep my eyes glued to the window and trace the Río Copalita upstream to Santiago Xanica, where the first oak forests begin and Zapoteco is still a living language, and then I’m lost for a time, without landmarks as we cross the pine forest, mountains and narrow valleys, so many mountains, of the Sierra Sur. Goodbye for now, Santa María Huatulco.
A critical time
This is no routine trip. We’re two months into the second Trump presidency in the US, and all of the reports I’ve been seeing make me fear that my country of origin is plunging into a dictatorship. Some of my Republican friends and family members interpret things differently, and still believe that Trump is fighting corruption and has everyone’s best interests at heart. I really wish I could believe that. A few days before my flight, Trump’s police arrested 261 immigrants in the US, accused them of being linked to a violent gang—no evidence, no trial—and shipped them to a hell-on-earth prison in El Salvador. When a federal judge ordered them to turn the planes around, they ignored the order. “Oopsie, too late,” posted Nayib Bukele, the dictator of El Salvador.
By the time I reach Salt Lake City and am ready to pass through US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, I have a pounding stress headache.
Finding our shared humanity
I pass through customs without incident, shielded (so far) from Trump’s terrorism by my white skin and my American passport. A security agent jokes lightheartedly with his companions about DOGE, the informal agency Trump has illegally created without congressional approval through which Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has been dismantling federal agencies, favoring his own companies, and accessing sensitive information about taxpayers. I’m relieved to see the human side of these security agents, relating without aggression to the passengers they’re screening and making jokes in the face of it all. As Trump tries to convert my country into a fascist police state, our shared humanity—immigrants, citizens, police officers—is a vital defense.
I think of my companions on the flight from Mexico City, an older man from Michoacán who has lived many years in Oregon and his wife from Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca, who is visiting the US for the first time ever. It took them three years to get her immigration documents approved. Their courage in crossing the border at this time gives me strength, and I hope they make it through without problems.
The resistance
I arrive in Missoula with a cautious sense of hope. This doesn’t feel like a community defeated by two months of attacks on democracy, humanity, and nature. If anything, I sense that the storm—as Trump and his ultra-rich backers show us the extremes of sick human behavior—is bringing us together. Community is resistance. Kindness to our fellow humans is resistance. Saying no to fascism is resistance. And nurturing a healthy connection with the earth is resistance.
And so — I connect anew with this Missoula earth and community that I love. I chart my steps forward, to live towards a thriving world connected to nature even as those afflicted with the sickness of greed and power would destroy it. I talk with my partner from the wintry cusp of a Montana spring and feel the tug of mangoes ripening in the hot March winds. And, as I ground my being once again in my relationship with this Missoula earth, I remember the pileated woodpecker family I got to know here last spring…
The pileated woodpeckers
It’s mid-April along the Clark Fork River when I first see the pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus). The cottonwoods are flowering and the red-osier dogwoods haven’t leafed out yet. An occasional mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) or Milbert’s tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti) butterfly flutters through the air. The tapping of the male pileated woodpecker is barely noticeable in the cottonwood (Populus balsamifera) the pair has chosen for their nest along the river channel. I watch him for maybe 20 minutes, perching on the outside of the dead snag and tap-tap-tapping on the trunk, periodically tossing out beakfuls of wood chips.
Finally I hear a kekekekeke call in the distance and he responds. A few minutes later, the same call and response again. And then comes the caller, the female. She lands on the far side of the nest tree. He flies off. She sidles over to the hole and starts the same excavation process. Tap-tap-tap, quietly. Toss toss toss, silently.
I look up the nest-building process. Three to six weeks in Oregon, reports Birds of the World. 23 days in Kentucky. Goodness!
Three weeks minimum for a pair of pileated woodpeckers to build a nest. Three weeks beating away at a stubborn dead tree, chipping a hole with a durable bill, constructing a fortress for the nestlings. Talk about dedicated parents.
Excavating a home
Two days later, I visit the pileated woodpeckers again: a sunny morning after a brief rainstorm in the night. The female is on the outside of the nest tree as I carefully approach, working on the cavity. But I get distracted by the ducks feeding in a riffle along the river—mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), gadwalls (Mareca strepera), and two green-winged teals (Anas crecca). When I turn back, the female is gone.
Fifteen minutes later, the male flies in, following the river upstream, and begins a long labor of tapping and tossing. The hole is already deeper than the last time I watched him. Still perching on the outside of the trunk, he now has to reach deep for wood chips. Many times I can only see the tips of his tail and wings, poking subtly out of the hole.
He is notably quiet, especially compared to the northern flickers (Colaptes auratus), which I can hear calling every few minutes from the surrounding forest. Finally, through pure luck, I’m able to capture a few of his calls.
Land of the pileated woodpeckers
Sitting here among the cottonwoods and red-osier dogwoods, the other sounds of this landscape gradually seep into my bones. A song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) gives long performances nearby, his melodic song of whistles and trills forming the backbone of the morning soundscape. One of his song perches is among the branches of a red-osier dogwood near the riverbank. Another one is higher, in the canopy of a young cottonwood. In the distance, another song sparrow answers from the far side of the river.
The deciduous forest of this floodplain is extensive, an expanse of gray cottonwood trunks towering above an understory of tall dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum), goldenrods (Solidago spp.), and invasive grasses. The cottonwoods might look drab to some eyes in this still-leafless season, but for wildlife habitat they’re incredible, providing food, cover, and nesting cavities. I can hear the signs of this bounty in the mid-April soundscape: the pileated woodpeckers aren’t the only cavity-nesters here. Several northern flickers call and drum periodically. Red-naped sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus nuchalis), recently arrived from their winter range in northern Mexico and the southwestern US, give their slowing-down tapping from dead branches, defending territories across this forest. A group of tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) swirls along the river, giving their liquid calls.
The voice of the pileated woodpeckers
The male pileated woodpecker remains quiet most of the time. Once, a northern flicker lands nearby, then thinks better of it. The pileated begins calling forcefully and follows the flicker, warning him off, then returns to his nest tree. Another time, as the song sparrow choruses in the background, he calls without any inspiration that I can see, the powerful kekekekeke that lets the whole forest know a pileated woodpecker is around.
Mostly I just hear his quiet tapping, barely audible over the noisy conversation of the river.
Further reading
Bull, E.L. and J.A. Jackson. (2020). Pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A.F. Poole, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/pilwoo/cur/introduction