Hungry Woodpecker - Avenue of Columns, Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico.

An assembled combination of photos: Picoides Villosus (Hairy Woodpecker) + Avenue of Columns in Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico - March 31, 2011.

The "Hall of Columns," 120 x 21 feet in size, has six monolithic columns of volcanic stone that originally supported a roof covering the entire hall. The darkened doorway leads through a low and narrow passageway to the interior of another enclosure, now roofless, but also covered in ancient times. This chamber is one of the most astonishing artistic artifacts of pre-Columbian America. Its walls are covered with panels of inlaid cut-stone mosaic known as stepped-fret design. The motif of these intricate geometric mosaics are believed to be a stylized representation of the Sky Serpent and therefore a symbol of the pan-regional Mesoamerican deity, Quetzalcoatl.

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Mitla (Liobaa in Zapotec, the Place of the Dead) flowered late, reaching a population of perhaps 10,000 during its apex around A.D. 1350. It remained occupied and in use for generations after the conquest.

During Mitla’s heyday, several feudalistic, fortified city-states vied for power in the Valley of Oaxaca. Concurrently, Mixtec-speaking people arrived from the north, perhaps under pressure from Aztecs and others in central Mexico.

Evidence suggests that these Mixtec groups, in interacting with the resident Zapotecs, created the unique architectural styles of late cities such as Yagul and Mitla. Archaeologists believe, for example, that the striking greca (Grecian-style) frets that honeycomb Mitla facades are the result of Mixtec influence.

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The Hairy Woodpecker is medium sized, equipped with a large bill for pounding through the surface bark of live or decaying trees to look for wood bugs and ants below the surface. This is a female Hairy woodpecker and doesn't have the red color patch on the crest of its hood as the male of the species does. Both male and females have a smoky white back ( the belly is also smoky white) and a strip of white down the spine between its shoulders, ending in a thin point at the root of the tail feathers. It has black wings with small white spots - the amount of white spots on the wings vary regionally (in the humid, warmer Pacific Northwest, the white patch and belly is more drab or looks like a soiled tinge. The range of the Hairy woodpecker starts in Alaska, through Canada and down to Panama from the coast to the eastern side of the coastal mountains and to the east to the great plains. They like forests, woodlands, river groves and shade trees.