The woodpecker and the backboard

Living adjacent to forest land and a state park it is not uncommon for wildlife of different varieties to be in the neighborhood or passing through our yard. The bears, coyote, deer, turkeys, rabbits, skunks, fox and all other creatures that are just sounds in the dark. For the most part it is all about living along side nature.

One of the more interesting visitors, or should I say co-residents is a woodpecker. He can be heard in our yard, a neighbor’s or in the woods out back and he continues to do a job on a dead tree in our yard. The rhythmic sound blends with the other birds and the sound of the wind in the trees. Occasionally though this woodpecker has taken to pecking on the basketball backboard in our driveway……at between 5-6 AM. In the almost absolute silence of the morning the rat-a-tat reverberates through the neighborhood like a child banging on pots and pans. Anyone thinking they will sleep through quickly learns differently. Going out and shooing it away stops it long enough to get back inside and get settled and then he is back again.

Over and over I have climbed up to the backboard trying to figure out what it is doing. I would have thought that after pecking once and finding not bugs the bird would have moved on. It makes no sense. Is it possible for birds to have behavioral issues? Woodpeckers peck to dig out bugs and there are no metal basketball bugs. Yes there are always wasp nests tucked in the metal tubes, but the woodpecker is no where near there. There is no reflection or nothing different about the backboard other than the resonance of the material.

Having tried the practical hands on research the next step was of course “Google”. Which of course led me to an article of how woodpeckers can mark their territory during breeding season (June – July) by pecking on metal gutters to make a noise? Bingo!! This woodpecker found something much better than gutters- noise with echo.

So we just have to wait it out for July has only a few weeks left.

After solving the mystery of the woodpecker on the backboard I got to thinking about the many things we do (or have done) over and over the same way expecting a different result. Like me wondering why the woodpecker didn’t move on after one try, we sometimes do things that don’t seem to make sense – over and over. Or is it, like the woodpecker, that we do this knowing that the result won’t be different but we want attention, whether consciously or unconsciously, and that is the end result. I’ve known people who have gone in and out of relationships with others and the pattern [to me] always looks the same and the outcome is always the same and it’s not good. But they do get attention because people feel sorry for them or for how they have been treated. The same can be said about work situations or family relationships. The same tapes get played over and over hoping for something different.

I know that I have fallen prey to this behavior occasionally over the years and a while ago started to observe my “woodpecker tendency” and to consciously catch myself from repeating non productive patterns and try to notice the unconscious attention getters. As far as the conscious attention getters, well they of course have their place.