Wildlife & Culture in the Time of Collapse.

A Field Dispatch.

by The Rootless Metropolitan.

Location: Nova CÆSAREA (Great Swamp NWR).

Date: Black Life Smatter Era, 2020.

And now for some other Animal News,

as contrasted to what was then blazing across the media in flames and hashtags…

The Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)—imagine a pterodactyl with a flame-colored mohawk and better parenting instincts—comes from what sociologists once called a stable two-parent home. The male takes an active role in both incubating the eggs and feeding the young. He does not merely provide, but guides—teaching the fledglings how to forage for an honest meal, hammer out a living, and listen for the echo of insects under bark.

These woodpeckers typically pair for life, though in an arrangement worthy of pastoral poetry or a mid-century marriage guide, they brood in separate locations after the young are launched. A quiet kind of spatial respect develops—something modern man may wish to take notes on.

A child once remarked that the red crest made the bird look like its hair was on fire—a fitting image, given the era. But despite its prehistoric size (nearly 18 inches tall) and intimidating drill-bit of a beak, there are no recorded attacks on humans… yet.

I returned to a nest I had found the previous day, camera in hand, light not yet right, fingers fumbling with exposure as the parent swooped in for a feeding. We fired off shots with reckless devotion. The opportunity felt sacred—and fleeting.

In the following days, I saw them again, two or three more times. A fellow watcher told me,

“You’re lucky. Some people wait a lifetime and never get these.”

Lucky? Maybe. But I logged many hours of near-ecstatic peace, sitting, watching, waiting—no drugs involved, thank you. Drugs are for tyros and the hopeless Tyrones who never graduate from the high of distraction to the stillness of presence.

I may have made my own luck. But I remain grateful—whether to natural serendipity or supernatural benevolence, I do not know.

The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, saved from becoming a mega-airport in the 1960s by a rare coalition of concerned conservationists, remains a gem in the teeming crown of Nova CÆSAREA. Unlike the seasonal thronging of Sandy Hook, the Great Swamp offers a quieter refuge—buffered by wealth, yes—but also by a shared reverence for the real.

Here, no dogs are allowed. The land is reserved for our free and wild pets—the birds, the frogs, the insects, and foxes—who earn their keep with no subsidies, and no screeds. They ask only to be left alone.

There is something noble in these beings. Something we forgot when we replaced the cathedral with the crowd, and the forest with a timeline.

FREE THE PETS.

Let us take notes from the woodpecker before we drill too deep.

—The Rootless Metropolitan

Nova CÆSAREA, 2020

(Catalogued under: Wildlife Witnessing, Collapse-Era Reveries)