The woodpecker is known as the Earth's drummer. The woodpecker represents self discovery. As they peck into and through trees and dead wood, hidden layers of one's psyche are revealed. (See sayahda.com and birdclan.org)

I'm becoming very fond of my nosy neighbor, even though he likes to drum on the side of the house at sunrise and makes the heeler dogs woof and howl. Left up to their own devices, Lila and Red Dawg vigilantly guard the yard against any intruding woodpeckers. They can run fast on those stout heeler legs, but not quite fast enough to get this feathered percussionist.

The woodpecker is becoming less skitterish these days. He used to just peek at me through the clerestory windows way up there in the blue, generally after pounding out a thunderous drum solo on the cedar shingles. I think he wanted to know if anybody was listening.

He's rather difficult to ignore.

But I suspect he knows that.

I increasingly catch site of him clinging to the posts of the front porch, peering in through the dining room windows as I'm going about my business. So I stop and stare back, across the gleaming pine table top.

And my heart beats a little faster as I inch around the dining room chairs, the cutlery and the stoneware, careful not to knock over the mountains of neatly stacked and folded laundry, towards the glass, trying to get a closer look before, in a sun-dappled flash of feathers, he's gone.