Worth a Closer Look

We had one tree on our property in Berkeley, and that was a dwarf apple tree which we planted on our younger son Tim's first birthday. We could never eat all the apples, but the neighbors would come by and take some, I made gallons of chutney and a group called Backyard Gleaners picked the rest and distributed them to food banks. Here in Santa Rosa we have many trees, mostly oaks, but in front of our bedroom windows are three palm trees…Queen Palms, I think.

I always thought these trees were rather silly, with nothing but rough bark on long skinny trunks .They have grown quite a bit since we moved here, so now the fronds are all at about the level of the roof and a ladder is required to remove the drying ones. We took one out in the back of the house because all we could see from the living room was the trunk.

The early rainfall this year seems to have produced a bonus of crop of acorns and therefore a bonus crop of acorn woodpeckers. When they're not pecking on the house, I have seen them working away on the trunks of the palm trees. They are very entertaining and resourceful birds and seem to occupy the top ladder of the pecking order above even the jays. Here is a picture of a pair of them looking less mad then they often do.

Curious, I went out to investigate, and found hundreds of acorns 'hidden' in the natural cavities formed by of the palm trunks.It must be considerably less of a headache  to poke the acorns in there than to have to peck a hole in our house.

While attempting to get a picture…not easy given the height of the trunk, the depth of the cavities and the available light…I began to notice the fact that what I had always thought of as ugly brown tree trunks were actually intricately folded, curled, subtly multicolored works of art. Once again, It pays to take a little time and look a little closer….

As for yesterday's mystery macro, those of you who guessed some kind of weight get a gold star. The little chicken and its companion little horse are only about an inch and a half high and weigh 162grams or almost 6 ounces…just about the right amount to balance the opium scale, since that is what they were used for….