The Red-headed Woodpecker 



By Mary Loesch 



Kindergartner in Madison School, Pittsburgh, Pa. 



One fine spring morning late in April a red-headed woodpecker 

 flew upon the telegraph wire; he sat there looking about as though 

 he were looking for someone and since no one was in sight he 

 began drumming on the wire to see if he could drum up someone. 

 Soon two more woodpeckers came, one was a Mr. Red Head 

 and one was a Miss Red Head. The woodpecker on the telegraph 

 wire noticed Miss Red Head and thought he would like to have 

 her for his wife. He could not sing to her because he has no song, 

 but he kept on drumming until she thought he was the finest 

 drummer in the world; finally she flew down on the ground, then 

 down he went too, he made a nice bow to show her his beautiful 

 red-head, then he stepped forward and backward then sideways 

 and then he made another bow coaxing her all this time to be his 

 mate; finally she decided to go with him, so they flew away 

 together to the woods to build a house to live in. They began 

 talking of house-keepings for each kind of woodpecker has its own 

 style of housekeeping. They build in either the trunk or branches 

 of a decayed or hollow tree, if they cannot find one of these, they 

 build in a sound tree. It took several days for these woodpeckers 

 to find a desirable place to live, because they wanted to be sur- 

 rounded by other trees. At last they found a place that both 

 of them liked very much. The first thing they did was to strike 

 out a circle in the bark as large as the doorway was to be and this 

 was just large enough for one of them to go in and out one at a time 

 and strange to say they made a perfect circle all of little dots. 

 If you think this is easy just try to draw free-hand a circle of dots 

 just like the one the woodpecker strikes out with his bill and see 

 whether it is easy or not. Just as soon as the size and shape of the 

 doorway suited the woodpecker he began to scale off the bark 

 inside his circle of holes, and while he was doing this work, he 

 clung to the tree with his stout toes and braced himself by his pointed 

 tail, the chips flew out past him as he dug, if they dropped into 

 the hole he swept them out with his bill and dug again. The 

 pair took their turn at doing this work and it took a week or more 

 to dig the nest, which extends horizontally for a few inches then 

 curves down ending in a little chamber large enough to make a 



66 



