IT MUST BE SPRING. The jackhammers are waking me and Galley Cat in the morning.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I haven’t abandoned Nuthatch Cabin for a one-bedroom walk-up above a shawarma joint in Queens. No, this soundtrack of heavy construction is from my friend the Flicker.

Not “My Friend Flicka,” the 1950s TV series about a Wyoming kid and his horse. No, this disturber of my island peace is a Flicker. A Northern Flicker, to be precise. A type of woodpecker.

I’ve always admired these handsome birds with the gently curving beak. The speckled gray breast and darkly striped back suggests the look of a plump British earl in a satin vest and charcoal morning coat, off to see the horseraces. Possibly at the invitation of a duke.

But my admiration has come under strain on recent mornings.

It started about two weeks ago. About 7 a.m. I was jolted from a dreamy sleep. Galley, who usually snoozes on my feet, was up on all fours with wild eyes. A noise that seriously resembled a pneumatic jackhammer was reverberating throughout the cabin.

“A friggin’ woodpecker!” I quickly realized.

I bolted out of bed to run downstairs and out the front door, barefoot and in my nightwear, to look angrily roofward and shout the first forceful, manly exclamation I could articulate: “SHOO!”

A Flicker nonchalantly fluttered away to a tree next door.

Since then it has recurred every few days. Once, I spotted another Flicker (if not the Flicker) at the tiptop of my steeply peaked metal roof. The timing is always the same. I’ve been repeatedly rousted from my bed. This morning I tried to ignore it, but it didn’t stop. And the effect of the hammering on metal truly is like trying to relax inside a bass drum during a rousing Sousa march.

Interestingly, my friend Hilary on Bainbridge Island just recently told of a Flicker attacking her home’s metal gutters. And my island neighbor, the Mad Birder, said a big Hairy Woodpecker was after his metal roof a couple days ago. The odd thing is: In 23 years at the Nuthatch, this is the first time I remember this happening.

It’s a mating-season thing, the M.B. assured me. I figured it was a testosterone phenomenon, with boys trying to impress the girlies with that jackhammering on metal. But with woodpeckers, both genders drum to attract dates, M.B. pronounced. And just to cement his Mad Birder cred, he informed me that he could distinguish between different woodpeckers, sight unseen, simply by the cadence of their drumming. (I bow to genius. As long as he keeps sharing his Laphroaig when I visit.)

Anyway, happy springtime! You’ll understand if you spy me dashing out of my cabin in Dawn’s Early Light shaking a fist at the roof.

Just help me out by shouting “SHOO!”

THIS SATURDAY, MARCH 28: Friends, join me and millions of other Americans for the third nationwide No Kings Rally, likely to draw the largest turnout of any protest in history. Everybody and every body counts. Sign up and get details about a rally near you: Find the map and plug in your ZIP code at www.nokings.org.