Last year while looking out of various windows I got accidental long looks at wildlife, all of which involved food and left me hungry for more. They included five acorn-eating woodpeckers, a mushroom eating squirrel and more than a thousand migrating tree swallows.

The acorn woodpecker is a nine-inch western bird that is a cacophony of red, white, and black. They have triangular shaped cheek-throat patches that are a pale yellow when the sun is on them. Their MO is storing acorns, the staple of their diet, in the bark of trees.

In dawn's first light just off a meandering road outside of Santa Cruz, California two large bare Douglas-fir trees stand out against the green hilly landscape above which hangs a heavy mist. What cannot yet be seen, are hundreds of holes, many of which have acorns protruding from them. The stockholders in this cooperative granary are five acorn woodpeckers, which nest there. As it gets lighter the nearer tree looks as if almost every available inch has holes, the pattern of which is elegant. The tree's two-tone moss of light green and white adds a delicate touch. Half of the holes have acorns in them, some of which appear to be tightly packed in; others appear to be loose while one long hole houses three acorns.

All five woodpeckers are perching on the tree from the top down. Looking at them fly to lower parts of the tree, it appears as if they are on a fast parachute ride. One of the woodpeckers, its black wings spread out and its large white rump patch and two white patches on its wings showing, lands on a tree. A stylish Dracula. Here comes another stockholder to make a deposit. With an acorn in its bill, the bird looks around then goes to the side of the tree. I see no hole there, but the bird whacks its bill several times and comes away sans acorn. Immediate storage.

A woodpecker is digging away hard with its pointed bill so quickly that it appears blurry. However tiny bits of fresh wood chips are clearly to be seen flying from the tree. Atop a horizontal branch in the smaller tree, yet another woodpecker is at work pecking away but slowly. I think it's making a partial hole to serve as an indented plate-holder, perhaps to crack a nut? Ingenious. Several months later I'm surprised to find a 1922 account of the same behavior with the writer referring to the limbs where such holes or cracks are used for holding and breaking open acorns as "breakfast tables."

It is a warm, humid but breezy summer evening as my wife and I are just finishing dinner. Out of the corner of my eye I see a squirrel on our lawn that has taken the cap off a very large mushroom and turned it upside down so it can nibble the rim. After a heavy rain, which had occurred several days before, such mushrooms often appear on our lawn. Perhaps the mushroom is a welcome change in the squirrel's diet of nuts. The squirrel is standing up and holding the mushroom with its little paws. I've never seen a squirrel eat anything but nuts. I move out on the patio for a closer look. The squirrel is now propped against the tree and appears to be eating a personal sized pizza minus sauce. However, because it isn't chewing fast, the mushroom isn't disappearing quickly.

At first I think that the mushroom is a delicacy and the squirrel is slowly savoring it. That doesn't seem to be the case. Well, maybe the squirrel just doesn't like the taste of the mushroom. The squirrel just doesn't seem to have much zip. Perhaps it's too hot to go looking for nuts. The little guy now drops what it is chewing and picks up another larger piece of mushroom but doesn't finish it, The uncomfortable weather may also account for the fact that it hasn't run away or frozen with my wife and me standing not far from it. Then the squirrel climbs to a branch in the tree and is in for the night. Was the mushroom a welcome change in its diet of nuts or merely a handy but hardly tasty alternative? Only the squirrel knows and it's not talking.

The semi annual migration of birds can be seen like a storm that materializes out of nowhere. This is what happened to my wife and me during last fall's migration in Cape May NJ, which is a flyway for migrating birds. Driving near the beach on our way to catch a ferry, the sky suddenly has a lot of black specks. As we get closer those specks prove to be at least a thousand small gray birds. Their swirling mass is over the beach but expands out over the street filling the sky like large pieces of flying soot. They act like a hurricane with an inner core, a mass of birds circle one way while an outer wall of birds flies in an opposite direction. Many of the birds land on, then leave, some bushes on the beach.

I get out of the car with binoculars to get a better look. The birds are tree swallows. I've seen them migrate before but never in such numbers. The swallows may have gone to the bushes to look for small green bayberries on them that are waxy and are fuel for the birds' flight south where their wintering grounds are located. They may also have been seeking tiny insects or "beach fleas," which they eat as well. I stay a short while until the show is almost over and get back in the car, as the ferry won't wait. We had a breakfast of egg whites, not of acorns, bayberry or mushrooms, in a local diner where we specifically asked for a table by a window. You never know what might fly by.