Home Wrecker!

Dear Diary,

This Downy Woodpecker was having a ball drilling holes into the old swallow nesting box.  It has been there for 20 years and it is time it is taken down.  I have a nice new bat house I want to put up but I will let this little one have some fun for awhile.  The rat-tat-tating was so loud! 

If you look carefully at this image you can see a flying insect in the background that looks just like a wee fairy!  It caught the light just right.  The elementary school teacher, it seems, is still alive and well!

I may have a home wrecker in the backyard but there is a home builder in the front yard. (extra)  At the front stone wall there was a little hole and a lot of sand kicked out.  I thought it might be a new chipmunk burrow but I just got my new book, A Field Guide to Your Own Backyard  by John Hanson Mitchell.and it says that chipmunks always carry away the dirt and don't leave it piled up around the hole like woodchucks.  Or maybe it is a really lazy chipmunk! So whoever is building this new home, it is a mystery.  It will be well buried once the snow starts to fly as the plows bury the stone wall each year.  I hope there is a backdoor as well.