A merry simile for an easy laugh, though I never thought of woodpeckers as laughing. See another avian reference to laughter, by the same author.

… and when I laugh, I laugh easy, like the woodpecker in spring.  He was ever a laugher, was the woodpecker, and a right merry laugher too.  He’ll fly into an ellum tree, and laugh to see it so green. 

May you laugh easily and merrily.

And in case you’re wondering about the collective nouns for both woodpeckers and owls, here they are. 

Source: Mary Webb, Precious Bane (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p. 45

Photo credit: Łukasz Rawa at unsplash