The story behind the image

As so often is the case, I did not leave the house that morning intending to take THIS picture. I was in fact planning to take pictures of Bald Eagles catching Kokanee Salmon from the surface of a lake. When I arrived at the state park shortly after sunrise, the eagles were indeed active, but by 10am they were getting quiet. As I had brought my (very patient) dog with me, I decided she deserved a nice walk through the state park. After a 30-minute brisk walk, we were returning to parking lot when I heard that distinctive ringing call of the wild - a Pileated Woodpecker! Wanting to observe it, I approached carefully, keeping my dog on a short leash. It turned out to be only about 30 feet off the trail! I worried that it might fly off at the sight of my dog, but the woodpecker paid no attention to us - just one more strange pair of animals that the woodpecker no doubt had seen hundreds of times in the park. Once past the bird, my dog and I raced to car, I grabbed my big telephoto lens and camera, stowed the dog in the car, and quickly returned to the spot where the bird had been. Amazingly, it was still there, about 30 feet above the ground, which was a bit high for a great photo. Still, I had rarely been this close to a Pileated Woodpecker that did not seem to care I was there, so I just hung out, taking a few ‘insurance’ pictures that I could perhaps post on social media. Every minute or so, I quietly walked a couple of feet closer to the tree, watching the bird carefully to make sure it was still ignoring me. I stopped when I was about 20 feet away, plenty close enough with the powerful lens I was using. Then the amazing completely-stupid-luck thing happened - the woodpecker started to work his way down the trunk, slowly but surely, ending up just a bit above my eye level! This was a dream shot: eye-level and close to one of the most spectacular birds in North America. He started working hard (thwok! thwok!) on the tree slightly out of my view, so I had to carefully edge around until I could see all of him. Then it was just a matter of patience and knowing what picture I wanted and how to get it. Once I had this image, I stayed a while longer, afraid of disturbing his intense search for food. Eventually he moved back up the tree, and I moved back to the car.