14 THE AWD UB ONBiU-L ie 
ALWAYS ANOTHER GOAL 
By Betty Groth 
Vice Prestdent —- Conservation 
At first it was exciting — the prospect of seeing a 19%4-inch, spectacular 
woodpecker with enormous black-and-white wings and a flashing red crest. 
But after five years of seeking the Pileated Woodpecker in its own nesting 
area, in a wildnerness which had been his home for decades, the bird was 
still off my life list. Not to have seen it was no longer exciting. It was a 
disgrace. 
Near brushes in discovery came early. “Professor 'frombley reports he 
has seen it near the 1916 cottage.” I heard the great bird then, but a twist 
of my head in a circle showed only gull shadows crossing the hemlock trees 
from bay to bay. 
The thrill of impending discovery came the next year as we motored 
down the narrow private road 7/10 of a mile from the highway to the 
big house. Several hundred feet from the stone wall that bordered the 
house and garden, the car stopped. Dr. Margaret Brookes pointed at the 
tall, dead maple stump six feet from the road. “Your woodpecker was right 
there yesterday. See those large oval and oblong diggings? The big fresh 
chips on the ground? He worked on that yesterday.” Excitement rose at 
the possibility — for twenty days I would be here to see him again and 
again. 
That was the year the great gray Sandhill Crane crossed high over the 
garden, with the setting sun lighting up his bright red forehead. The year 
of my longest bird list — the Indigo Bunting singing me awake at 4:30 a.m. 
on my bedroom windowsill, the Crested Flycatcher with its yellow breast 
at the same sill the next morning, inspecting new phone wires, a novelty in 
the wilderness. Swelling my bird list were the orange-bronze, immature 
Red Crossbill, Blue Grosbeak, Purple Finch. The Black-throated Green 
Warbler nested in the giant arbor vitae by the screened porch, but although 
we could hear the young squeaking when the male came with food, we 
could not spot the nest from any point on the porch, in the garden, or any 
floor of the house, including the attic. This warbler nest is not difficult to 
find. It is impossible. We had two yearling fawns eating maple brush by 
the road. A Ruffed Grouse guided her chicks at midday along the stone 
wall, and a fox followed at supper-time. Once a porcupine came to call at 
the kitchen door, but never the Pileated Woodpecker. I combed the woods 
for hours, for days, but he evaded me. Frustration grew monumental. 
Reports came in the week after I left: “He flew right in front of the 
car as we drove by the dead maple stump.” Somebody who had never been 
there before “Saw him cling for a moment to the giant birch tree outside 
the front door.” I hated everybody who had seen the woodpecker. The bird 
had made a fool of me. News came that he had moved eastward into the 
Ellstrom’s woods, where they “saw him all winter.”’ 
The crowning humiliation came with a phone call from the Lee Bullens 
at the year-round home in the east woods: “Do YOU have young wood- 
peckers? WE have THREE so far. In the yard.” They had young Pileateds — 
