There are few bottlebrush trees here,
A couple grew in front of our house,
The entrance to our house they guard.

When it is season for them,
They bloom very lavishly,
Even striking is one's stem.

It was pecked upon by a woodpecker,
Thak-Thak-Thak, Thak-Thak-Thak,
The stem's bark finally gave away slowly.

By the end of October '06,
The hollow was readied,
The woodpecker moved in.

It gave shelter to the two birds initially,
The male & the female woodpeckers,
They stayed there for a complete season.

Saw their family grow,
From just the parents,
It even had chicks now.

The chicks grew fast under parental care,
I even listened to their infant chirping,
Saw the parents flying to get forage not so rare.

Then one day a snake slithered,
Until that hollow, it climbed,
The woodpeckers made a lot of noise.

They both screeched repeatedly,
But their cries were useless,
They could not scare away the snake.

The serpent then came out after few hours,
Now the crawling was sluggishly lazy,
Its mouth smeared with gooey young feathers.

The family had been destroyed,
An eerie silence shrouded the hollow,
The woodpecker chicks were dead.

Soon, an eagle had hunted the snake,
Hovering in the sky it spotted it,
Grabbed it when in the sunlight it basked.

Now the woodpeckers were gone,
Probably in search of a new tree,
A new tree where a snake won't come.

As for the tree's hollow,
It made a new home,
For a parrot species this time.

And time knows that change will descend,
Even the parrots will desert the hollow,
They will leave in search of the better greens.

Maybe a family of owls will come in the end,
It will be a long-time home, the hollow,
For owls are known to fill all the vacancies.