There are TWO Alternate Woodies! Saturday night as I gloamed alone on the patio, while H slaved away at his computer inside, as I watched Alternate Woodie who was shyly perched in his Woodie alternate tree, suddenly another Alternate Woodie—same darkish, unformed coloring—appeared beside me in the main Woodie tree. AW1 flew right over to the main tree too; AW2 flew away toward the back of the house; and AW1 then flew to tree #3 off to the right, which is pretty close and from which he could presumably still keep an eye on the main tree.
But presumably they are from the same nest—so who gets the tree? Do they share sometimes? And where have mum and dad gone? They seem to have disappeared, which is what happened last year when the first Young Woodie was born; for a while we'd see the little family group sitting together, then suddenly it was Young Woodie alone.
The tree, by the way, an arthritic old oak at the edge of our patio, is rife with holes. At dusk Alternate Woodie flies over, hops and peers around for a while to make sure it's safe, and then ducks down into this year's hole, where we think he beds down for the night, even though my Aunt Dorothy commented that birds don't live in nests when they're not having babies. Perhaps that doesn't apply to golden-fronted woodpeckers. It's quite sweet.
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