I go Birds Every Child Should Know 



or chiselling out a home in some partly decayed 

 tree. How cheerfully his vigorous taps resound ! 

 Hammer, chisel, pick, drill, and drum — all these 

 instruments in one stout bill — ^and a flexible 

 barbed spear for a tongue that may be run out 

 far beyond his bill, like the hum^mingbird's, 

 make the woodpecker the best-equipped work- 

 man in the woods. All the other birds that 

 pick insect eggs, grubs, beetles and spiders from 

 the bark could go all over a tree and feast, but 

 the woodpecker might follow them and still 

 find plenty left, borers especially, hidden so 

 deep that only his sticky, barbed tongue could 

 drag them out. 



As you see his body flattened against the 

 tree's side perhaps you wonder why he doesn't 

 fall off. Do you remember why the swifts, 

 that sleep against the inside walls of our chim- 

 neys, do not fall down to the hearths below? 

 Like them and the bobolink, the woodpeckers 

 prop themselves by their outspread, stiffened 

 tails. Moreover, they have their toes arranged 

 in a curious way — two in front and two behind, 

 so that they can hold on to a section of bark 

 very much as an iceman holds a piece of ice 

 between his tongs. Smooth bark conceals no 

 larvae nor does it offer a foothold, which is why 

 you are likely to see woodpeckers only on the 

 trunks or the larger limbs of trees where old, 

 scaly bark grows. 



