I was hiking through our greenbelt this afternoon, moving slowly and
following some deer tracks, so I was looking at the ground pretty intently.
I came around a corner, and came face to face with a pileated woodpecker,
which was around the opposite side of tree trunk from me, maybe 15 inches
away from my face. The woodpecker made a sound I have not heard before, a
raven sounding Quork! and I made a sound that the Pileated has probably not
heard hairy bipeds make, sort of an AHHHHHH!. I threw up my hands to my face
as the bird took off. I unintentionally hit the birds wing which made it
sort of stagger (if that word applies to flying) sideways and forced an
ungraceful emergency landing in a vine maple thicket. The bird got its
balance, then flew about 10 feet away to the trunk of a large tree. It
hitched itself up to well out of my reach, then did sort of a shake down,
raising and lowering all the feathers on its back, and giving a visible
shudder. Sort of like saying, WHOAAA that was WAY too close, the ugly hairy
biped actually TOUCHED me. ICK! Then it hitched itself to the side of the
tree, leaned back to peer at me and gave the typical pileated whinny call. I
imagined it was saying. Don't DO that! We stared at each other for a few
minutes then it flew off out of site. After collecting myself from this
encounter I resumed my tracking and when I looked down I noticed that my
lower pant leg had a big gooey splotch on it. I had scared the **it out of
the bird and it ended up on my pants and shoes.

Rob Sandelin
Sky Valley Environments <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous at msn.com



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