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Life is Good

I had forgotten that in our house on West Westwood Place, a woodpecker, who had signed up at ChristianDiddle.com, or at Matchmaker.siding, used to use our swamp cooler up on the roof as his drum to attract the attention of female hammerheads.  I am not sure whether I am reminded of that by Anthony Wiener or by the fact that Gail sent me a tin peckerwood.  

 Today I finally found both a hammer drill and a masonry bit, and I did my own advertising to the female population in the neighborhood.  So far, I am ambiguous to report, I have had no responses to my stucco signals, but we do have a woodpecker at the front door.  

 We have real flickers in the back yard, but they--a kind of ground woodpecker--spend their leisure hours trying to steal hummingbird nectar.  

 We have created a kind of bird paradise here:  there are unidentified small birds at the feeder, bullied by doves to kick seed out onto the ground, where the Gambel's quail also wait.  Tiny Anna's hummingbirds hum at the feeders.  The screech owls in the nest I put up for them are so stealthy that we have never seen them, nor a sign of them, although Mari is sure and certain that they are there, or want to be, or will be. Fourteen times Mari says she has seen cardinals, but I always come too late.  I have seen phainopeplas.  In other words, I can scarcely tell a tin woodpecker from a pyrrhuloxia.  

 No matter!  I have found my hammer drill.  And I am not running for office.  

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