Backyard and Beyond

For days now, a Red-bellied Woodpecker has been heard in the London plane tree across the street. The distinctive “quirrr!” announces his bird. But he doesn’t stay long. I hustled to the window with the camera a couple of times before just staking out the situation to catch these images.
The bird is caching acorns into a rotted-out knot. These look like the small acorns of the Pin Oak (Q. palustris), a common street tree here.
(It gives me inordinate pleasure to hear these bouncing off parked cars when they fall.)
This LP is blog-famous because it was the focus of so much American Kestrel activity until its upright branch, used as a mini-falcon perch, was felled in a storm in November of 2018. The Ks also used to cache their bird prey in a knot in this tree.
After this bird stored this acorn inside, with what seemed to be some care, another Red-bellied flew into the tree and chased this one off. Are they fighting over the cache?

Speaking of fighting over the cache… this is one fraught dawn of an eve, isn’t it? I think there will be a strong anti-Trump vote. He’ll lose by more millions than he did in 2016. Of course, as in 2016, the majority of voters don’t necessarily count in this savage republic. It’s down to a few states, even a few counties within those states…and a decades-long project to capture the courts, depress turnout and disenfranchise voters, and establish minority-rule Republican Party authoritarianism.

Let’s hope there are enough people with good sense and decency to overwhelm these Republican intentions.