Birds in the Forest

Out this late December afternoon to the Woods to escape ennui and see what the real world was doing. I wandered from the Northeast gate south along the Tree Loop and stopped to survey the view from the heights above the wash. In December it is possible to look over, down into, and across the Woods from this vantage point. The leaves are gone. The wash below has significant volume of standing water, despite our past many days without rain. I paused by the old walnut and remembered admiring its large size when I first walked this way. It would take one and a half of me to wrap arms around its circumference. I watched it struggle and lose its crown in a drought ten years ago, and hoped that it would rebound.. and it did, but not enough. It slowly declined until the year I searched its crown to find any green leaves. Now one low branch has fallen, and bark all around the base is falling away from the bole. Walnut wood is dense, heavy and strong. I expect that the snag will stand for years and serve as home for many denizens of the Woods. Already at the base there is a hole large enough for a small opossum or raccoon leading into what must be a fine dry home in the base of the hollow trunk.
South and west I walked to find a crew working along the southern boundary and the power line right of way. I am sad to see the trees there I have watched and gotten to know over the years of walking here. They will stop growing with chemical inhibition or be cut. Another encroachment of our civilization upon the precious remnants of local wild forest we have surviving.
Fifteen years ago when I first came to these Woods they were a small wildlife sanctuary where I found creatures, fox, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, armadillo, box turtles and snapping turtles, coyote, bobcats, deer, owls, hawks and nesting accipiters. The Woods were connected then through a broad corridor down to the wilder lands stretching for miles along the river. Then the new trash facility was built in the floodplain, cutting the corridor to a narrow 30 foot wide conduit of cane. All the cover that remains for the wildlife populations that used to roam into the Woods. Now the Woods are quieter, diminished. But still the miracles of trees and roots, of fungi and insects, of small soil animals and infinite microbial diversity in each micro plot persists. The community of trees and shrubs, 30 different species still stands. Their roots are what matters, what defines the individual. Storms may break the stems. Heat, ice and cold may damage or kill the canopy; but if the roots survive and sprout new shoots, the individual remains, and communicates with neighbors, not in a mystical or magical sense, but through mycorrhizae, root physiology, their communal biology.
Reaching the Southwest gate on Chautauqua, I walked north from the big bur oaks to the low SW Woods that was still largely flooded inches deep. I settled on the big green ash log and watched a passel of birds enjoying the warm winter day and the good habitat. A dozen robins took turns flying down to the preferred bathing spot, flapping their wings and splashing water on themselves while a smaller flock of goldfinches in camouflage winter plumage picked through wet leaves and the sodden environment. Two yellow-shafted flickers and three red bellied woodpeckers investigated broken snags and branches, looking for tasty spiders and plump grubs. Two blue jays flew into the branches of the mid canopy, watching for opportunity, and a pair of bright red male cardinals perched low in the fallen branches. The Woods on very cold days can be quiet. The birds move south, or seek shelter; but today they were busy enjoying a mild day in winter.