Why a Woodpecker?

A Downy woodpecker creating a hole in the top of a tree in our backyard.

Why a woodpecker on our home page? Of course, the wood needed in creating cabinets and millwork has some symbolic resonance with this bird. Woodpeckers spend a lot of their time working with wood. But the real story has to do with a beautiful happening in our backyard. 

Behind our house there is a tall, pretty much dead tree, that is now a pole with limbs. We watched one Saturday, as a Downy woodpecker created a hole the diameter of his head in the very top of the hollow tree. He drilled the wood into a perfect, or near perfect circle. A little off one part and a smidge more around the bottom. Then he started emptying the hole of the incredible amount of sawdust he’d created. Beakful after beakful scooped and thrown over its shoulder.  

At one point late into the afternoon, after pecking at this project for hours, it flew off, I’m not sure where. At that moment, a small finch who had been twittering around the woodpecker and its hole the entire day, flitting from one tree branch to another, flew straight to the perfectly sized cavity and went straight inside. The finch came out, went in and out and in, peeking just its head through the opening. Then the tiny bird started its own excavation, flinging sawdust out of its new find.  

The woodpecker finally came back and the finch flitted away. But not far. The woodpecker drilled the area some more, threw more sawdust and then just left. It never came back. The finch took up residence and is still there today, cozy and ready for a spring brood, I’m sure.  

The woodpecker created a home for the finch without ever realizing the full value that all of its work gave to another living animal. We never know the real impact of our actions. We never know their legacy. We hope that what we build for you is a gift that keeps on giving year after year into generations, to people we may never know but whose lives we will have touched.       

The very happy and very lucky finch.