Pileated woodpecker in Beaver Pond Natural Area. I watched as this bird first came into my field of view with a flash of wings landing on the opposite side of a tall snag beyond the range of my photo lens. He reappeared after a few minutes just before I was about to give up, thinking that I had been mistaken in initially thinking that the flash of wings was real and had stopped at the tree. He did reappear and flew down to forage on short stubs and logs on the ground, before he came to this rotting log, and commenced poking and probing and prying and tossing off bits of the rotted wood. All the while I was silently urging the bird to keep moving along the log to get to the more photogenic spot of sunlight at the end of the log. He finally obliged and spent several minutes in the sun as shown, before flying off, and out of my sight.
Note: the water below and behind the bird is Thornton Creek backed up by a beaver dam.
