More than a bird: a living drill. That's the black woodpecker in brief. Essential element for the renewal and the biodiversity of the forest environment (the large holes it digs for nesting - being the only one capable to do it in that size - are reused by several other species of birds and even some mammals), I saw him dipping its beak in a trunk half a meter in diameter, working it as if it were of salt dough.
In these very days from that oval hole young red crests of chicks ready to fly are eyeing... a photo I'm not going to take: like almost all of the pictures at nest (of any species) it would feel as the old same deja vù, even beyond any ethical doubt; besides, the aesthetic and emotional potential that could be included would be miserable, far from deserving the slightest form of potential annoyance.
I'm posting instead a shot made during a casual encounter: the very hard and poor backlight let itself to be converted without a protest in a B&W high contrast image, a technique I used to love a lot already in my (very distant) days in the darkroom, when I manipulated sheets of photomechanical film among stinking chemical mixtures... thinking about it now, in the Instagram era, seems a lot like a picture from medieval alchemy. Yet no retouching software is able to give me back the same feelings. Who knows, maybe it was just me being different back then. Young, for a start.

Remember those whooper swans from "Synchronized Swimming"?
They clearly didn't just swim together.