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Remorseless nuthatches and kinglets and titmice and woodpeckers probe every crevice of bark and mulch and fallen leaf, looking for those invertebrates that have been unlucky enough or careless enough to leave themselves in range of beak and tongue.

When I get to the bottom of the woodpile I toss aside the muddy logs that have lain on the ground - to be rinsed off by the next rain.  Under them are multitudes of pill bugs and nightcrawlers and beetles and ruddy centipedes.  And I am like a pagan god of Destruction and Undoing as I tear away the massive rooves of their winter refuges and expose them to cold winter sunlight and feathered predation.  

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