Last October 2010, my friend Louise and I took a trip to the coast, Bandon to Florence. I don’t like going on I-5 if I can avoid it. So we went up Tablerock Rd angling toward Shady Cove.
Louise suggested we stop in at TouVelle Park because she wanted to show me something. We drove all the way through the parking lot to the end. Where there was a tall Pine Tree, so I thought to myself “Big Deal!” after all we live in Oregon.
We got out of the car and she had me get up closer to the tree where I could get a good look at the bark. To my amazement, there were 100’s of holes with acorns stuck in many of them. I did mention that the tree was a Pine right?
Louise had no idea why there were acorns in the tree and there was no one about that I could ask. The best I could do was take a picture of this unusual site:
Fast forward 6 months. May 1st on a Sunday Mom and I were out for a ride after church at New Song. I thought it would be interesting to take a photo of the whole tree in TouVelle Park. So we drove past the little building at the beginning of the park, found our way back to where that tree was in October. Before I could get out of my car, a park ranger is standing in front of me writing down my license plate number (I didn’t pay as I came into the park. Oops!)
I was able to talk him out of giving me a ticket (nice young man), get my picture of the tree and ask him a bunch of questions.
The tree you see in the picture is called a “Granary Tree”, because the Acorn Woodpeckers in the area (after drilling holes in it) use the tree to stash acorns which they then eat all winter for food. The ranger said he only knew of one other tree like this in all of Jackson County. That tree is over near the Rogue River close to the now torn down Gold Rey Dam.
You can read more about this in Wikipedia, I didn’t get a picture of the Acorn Woodpecker but I certainly know what it looks like now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Woodpecker
Matt 6:25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns (well maybe in a tree), and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” NIV
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