I went to my office fairly early this morning to do some work. I have a couple of new-to-me doctors and I wanted to work on their reports while I was still pretty fresh (I tried yesterday afternoon and it was an unqualified disaster). While I was sitting at my desk, I caught sight of a pileated woodpecker flying through the yard. It's actually kind of hard to miss them—they look like pterodactyls flying through the trees.

I went to look out the window and realized there were TWO—no, THREE—no, FIVE!—pileated woodpeckers out on one tree in the front yard. Three were males and two were females. I wondered if perhaps it was a family and mommy and daddy were teaching the youngsters how to find bugs in the trees. From what I have heard, pileated woodpeckers are fairly territorial and I can't imagine that FIVE of them would have been in the same tree if they weren't related.

I was so excited that I rushed upstairs and rousted the husband out of bed and made him look out the window. While we were watching them, two of the males flew to a tree right outside our bedroom window. Then the third male joined them. I ran back downstairs to get my camera, but by the time I got back upstairs, only two were still in the tree. But I got a picture (it's kind of grainy because I took it through the screen):

We've had pileated woodpeckers here since we bought this property in 1994. They are some of my favorite birds. We have a very tall tree at the back of the property that I refer to as The Woodpecker Tree because the males will go sit at the top of that tree and call to the females. I have forbidden the husband to cut it down, even though it is very dead. If he cuts it down, the woodpeckers will have to find a different tree and none of the rest of the trees are as tall.

So that was our wildlife excitement for this morning. DD#2 and I saw a black bear the other day at the jobsite where the husband is currently working. He tried to tell me it was a Newfoundland dog that's been hanging around, but DD#2 and I aren't buying it. I've seen enough bears (and enough Newfoundland dogs) to know the difference. It was a bear.