Dear Lee,

Believe me, I know how you feel. We recently had the same thing happen;
an 80-foot dead hemlock snag fell over into our yard overnight. Luckily,
it didn't hit the house or duck pen. But it did fall in such a way as to
break up into large sections on our lawn, which will have to be cleaned
up. We will probably take the sections and throw them into the woods and
let them break down naturally.

But I agree with you: my husband and I will miss that tree greatly. It
was a source of a great deal of happy mornings, watching our resident pair
of pileated hunt for morning grubs.

Fortunately, we have a couple of other snags in view that we're hoping
they'll concentrate on. As a matter of fact, I saw a downey male on one
of them this morning. Woodpecker sightings before I leave for work always
makes me happy; I'm not even sure why.



On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, leerentz wrote:

> We're going to miss that dead tree. The flickers had
> successfully raised their young there last year, and this
> year, the cavity was used as a roost hole for both a western
> screech owl and a flicker (at different times!). The tree
> had been probed by pileated and hairy woodpeckers, as well
> as by red-breasted sapsuckers. Now the fallen trunk will
> shelter salamanders and will be inspected by winter
> wrens--as the cycle of the forest continues.