The bird call tapes must be working. I came slowly awake from unsettling dreams of pagers left vibrating on the table to the reality of a woodpecker going nuts on the siding, and as the repeated and endless calls began to sink into my brain, I thought groggily “A descending whinney is a downy woodpecker, but this is a flat whinney, so it’s a Northern Flicker.”

Satisfied with this, I drifted back asleep, and dreamed of pale woodpecker women standing in green fields with badly airbrushed mist.