Happy as an Acorn Woodpecker in an Acorn Woodpecker Tree (with apologies to Randy Newman)

Really really sorry, Randy. It just doesn't flow like "Happy as a monkey in a monkey tree", but I kind of think of that song when I watch Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) hard at work storing their acorn riches in a "granary tree". Granary trees are the storage warehouses for a flock of the very sociable woodpeckers. A single chosen tree might hold 50,000 of them, and a woodpecker is almost always there guarding it.

I was just starting a hike at Pinnacles National Park a few weeks ago in Bear Gulch when I heard the familiar waka-waka of the Acorn Woodpeckers over my head. There were three or four of them.

Acorn Woodpeckers are almost the textbook definition of socialists. They share in the work of food storage, but they also share in the raising of young. Females will even lay eggs as a group in a single next. They are a truly western species, being found in the coastal states in oak woodlands, ranging into Mexico and Central America.