Right There in Black and White

What’s black and white and lives in a hollow tree? Downy Woodpeckers, of course! And there’s nothing better than a suet cake to make them feel welcome.

Last year during the snowy weeks, when the little cage birds can grasp and peck away at our suet had been knocked down, whether by a raccoon or a storm, I couldn’t say, I put a suet cake in a pie tin on the small table on the east deck. A Downy Woodpecker hammered right through the snow piled over it.

Suet is animal fat. Years ago, we made our own suet. As I recall, we used bacon grease and bird seed. Suet melts on a warm day so the kind we made was suet suited for consistently cold weather.

Now we buy suet. Not often, but at least for the hard winter days when the birds seem so grateful for our feeder. It’s designed for year-round use, or so the package says. Last year’s suet was probably cheap. We bought a case of cakes and put the extras under the kitchen sink, I think. Even if I can’t remember where they were, a mouse knew. Mice, apparently, like suet as much as Downy Woodpeckers. I set a chunk down by the dishwasher hose the mouse chewed through and surrounded it with traps. As you guessed, the mouse never bit the bait after I did that.

The birds that patronize our feeders on our east deck have become pets, more or less. I feel reluctant to leave home for a few days because I hate to neglect them. This year I bought a single cake of high-class suet with meal worms in it at the Blue Ridge Birdseed store. I bet it was made with high-class fat. It gave me pleasure to hang this nice suet cake in the cage, which I had retrieved from the woods. The Downy Woodpecker came to it, along with the White-breasted Nuthatch and Carolina Chickadee. All these like to grasp a vertical surface while they peck away at their food.

Unsurprisingly, the cage once again disappeared from the deck rail within two days. I found it on the ground outside the basement door about twelve feel below. Meanwhile, the Dark-eyed Juncos, Northern Cardinals, and American Goldfinches were getting after scattered suet crumbs. The hanging chain was lost so I decided to set the cage with the remaining suet up on the deck rail and take my chances.

Now the Downy Woodpecker brought his mate. Mrs. Downy has a black cap, while Mister has a red spot.

The red spot reminds me of tomato juice, in which people bathe after a close encounter with another creature that’s black and white and lives in a hollow tree, the Eastern Spotted Skunk. It must be on the prowl for underground mice, beetles, or yellow jackets. Its musky smell keeps me alert for its presence. And if it hauls away our suet, I’m not going to put up a fight.