I haven't heard any hammering, so I don't think they have any acorns to harvest and store yet, though I have see a couple of small acorns on the ground. I think the fallen acorns are weaklings that fell prematurely. The full crop won't be ready for a few weeks yet. Then the woodpeckers will get really raucous.
We used to have a couple of pyracantha bushes in the yard, and there was something in the berries that got birds high when they ate them. Lots of things are ripening now, and I'm wondering if the woodpeckers have eaten something with psychoactive properties. It's possible that I'm watching the results of a bird binge of some sort. If so, I wish I could get some of whatever it is. It might help pass the sultry late summer evening, after the entertaining birds have retired for the night.
Sunday Verse
Ave atque Vale
by Gilbert Sorentino
We are going away now,
goodbye, goodbye, we are
slowly leaving you, we
are disappearing in eddies
of smoke, the trees are
around us, and I know
you thought we would stay
but we are moving away
now, more swiftly, it
seems. We. Who moved
nowhere for so long, that
is a strange animation
there? It is I and
you, dear, we are leaving
ourselves now, slowly, see
our friends speaking to us
as we depart an inch
or two above the grass, I
can just see you there and I
beside you, goodbye.