WOODVILLE – This photo submitted by Ruth Recio was selected by the Tyler County Art League judge as the Big Woods Nature Trail Photo-of-the-Month for September. Recio, who is from Houston, enjoyed the trail across the parking lot from the Pickett House Restaurant in Woodville.
The photo is an optical illusion. The green leaf canopy above the dead tree trunk (snag) is provided by neighboring trees. Last year, students hiking the trail nicknamed this trunk “The Woodpecker Tree.”
Dead tree trunks, or snags, are valuable to a wide variety of wildlife, and in particular woodpeckers. Woodpeckers use snags for homes, drumming, nesting, roosting and feedings. Woodpeckers hammer their bills against the resonating surface of dead tree trunks to make a loud drumming sound; this is their courtship and territorial “song”. Though they have powerful bills, woodpeckers are only able to excavate nests in trees with soft decaying centers.
Many insects live and reproduce in decaying wood, providing food for woodpeckers. The old woodpecker holes provide homes for swallows, chickadees, nuthatches, bluebirds, owls and other birds.
Unfortunately, this snag broke in half and fell a few days after Recio took her photo. There are numerous other photo opportunities along the Big Woods Nature Trail waiting for you.
