I never intended for this blog to become so nature focused, but I keep noticing nature-y things. 

Last weekend I saw a woodpecker angrily chasing a robin away from the upper branches of our silver maple.  The robin kept coming back to the tree, and the woodpecker kept going after it.  Yesterday when I was cleaning the yard (two large dogs), I realized that the squeaky noise I’ve been hearing for the last week is not branches rubbing together in the breeze but baby woodpeckers instead.  Their incessant tweeting sounds like a sticky piston on old machinery: squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak!

When I realized that the other incessant bird chirps I was hearing came from the parent woodpecker, I grabbed my camera.  Here are about two minutes of video I shot. 

That other noise you hear besides the chirping?  When I shared the video with my family last night, one of my daughters remarked, “It’s like watching a Planet Earth video, except for the garbage truck.”