192 Birds Every Child Should Know 



Very early in the spring you will hear the 

 downy, like the other woodpeckers, beating a 

 rolling tattoo on some resonant limb, and if you 

 can creep close enough you will see his head 

 hammering so fast that there is only a blur 

 above his shoulders. This drumming is his love 

 song. The grouse is even a more wonderful per- 

 former, for he drums without a drum, which no 

 woodpecker can do. The woodpecker drums not 

 only to win a mate, however, but to tell where 

 a tree is decayed and likely to be an easy spot 

 to chisel, and also to startle borers beneath the 

 bark, that he may know just where to tunnel 

 for them, when they move with a faint noise, 

 which his sharp ears instantly detect. 



This master workman, who is scarcely larger 

 than an English sparrow, occasionally pauses 

 in his hammering long enough to utter a short, 

 sharp peek, peek, often continued into a rat- 

 tling cry that ends as abruptly as it began. 

 You may know him from his larger and louder- 

 voiced cousin, the hairy woodpecker, not only 

 by this call note, but by the markings of the 

 outer tail feathers, which, in the downy, are 

 white barred with black; and in the hairy, are 

 white without the black bars. Both birds are 

 much striped and barred with black and white. 



When the weather grows cold, hang a bone 

 with a little meat on it, cooked or raw, or a 

 lump of suet in some tree beyond the reach of 



