This little woodpecker is peeping out the “front door,” waiting for mom or dad to deliver some fresh food.

He or she is in the trunk of a dead palm around the block from me. I heard some peeping while I was out walking the dogs last night (I think there is more than one bird in there) and went back with my camera this morning.

The trunk has many holes.

Red-bellied woodpeckers nest, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in “dead trees (hardwoods or pines), dead limbs of live trees, and fence posts. The same pair may nest in the same tree year after year, but typically excavate a new cavity each year, often placing the new one beneath the previous year’s.”

I have seen Red-bellied Woodpeckers in and out of this tree, and I could hear them nearby, so I didn’t linger too long and interrupt the little one’s breakfast.

The tree and bird were at the bottom of this street, near those two neighbors saying hello to each other. One of them is the woman who owns the house where the nestling’s tree is located. She told me she deliberately left the dead tree there because the woodpeckers nest there every year.