76 Handbook of Nature-Study 



Observations — i. Can you tell the red-head from the other wood- 

 peckers? What colors especially mark his plumage? 



2. Where does the red-head nest? Describe eggs and nest? 



3. What have you observed the red-head eating? Have you 

 noticed it storing nuts and acorns for the winter? Have you noticed it 

 flying off with cherries or other fruit? 



4. AVhat is the note of the red-head? Have you ever seen one 

 drumming? What did he use for a drum? Did he come back often to 

 this place to make his music? 



Supplementary reading — "The House That Fell" in Nestlings of Forest 

 and Marsh; Our Birds and their Nestlings, p. 90; Birds, Bees and 

 Sharp Eyes, John Burroughs. 



Another trait our wood peckers have that endears them to me, and that has never been 

 pointedly noticed by our ornithologists, is their habit of drumming in the spring. They 

 are songless birds, and yet all are musicians; they make the dry limbs eloquent of the 

 coming change. Did you think that loud, sonorous hammering which proceeded from 

 the orchard or from the near woods on that still March or April morning was only some 

 bird getting its breakfast? It is downy, but he is not rapping at the door of a grub; 

 he is rapping at the door of spring, and the dry limb thrills beneath the ardor of his 

 blows. Or, later in the season, in the dense forest or by some remote mountain lake, 

 does that measured rhythmic beat that breaks upon the silence, first three strokes follow- 

 ing each other rapidly, succeeded by tivo louder ones with longer intervals between them, 

 and that has an effect upon the alert ear as if the solitude itself had at least found a 

 voice — does that suggest anything less than a deliberate musical_ performance? In 

 fact, our ivoodpeckers are just as characteristically drummers as is the ruffed grouse, 

 and they have their particular limbs and stubs to which they resort for that purpose. 

 Their need of expression is apparently just as great as that of the song-birds, and it 

 is not surprising that they should have found out that there is music in a dry, seasoned 

 limb ivhich can be evoked beneath their beaks. 



The woodpeckers do not each have a particular dry limb to which they resort at all 

 times to drum, like the one I have described. The woods are full of suitable branches, 

 and they drum more or less here and there as they are in quest of food; yet I am con- 

 vinced each one has its favorite spot, like the grouse, to which it resorts, especially in 

 the morning. The sugar-maker in the maple woods may notice that this sound pro- 

 ceeds from the same tree or trees about his camp with great regularity. A woodpecker 

 in my vicinity has drummed for two seasons on a telegraph-pole, and he makes the wires 

 and glass insulators ring. Another drums on a thin board on the end of a long grape- 

 arbor, and on still mornings can be heard a long distance. 



A friend of mine in a Southern city tells me of a red-headed woodpecker that drums 

 upon a lightning-rod on his neighbor's house. Nearly every clear, still morning a.t 

 certain seasons, he says, this musical rapping may be heard. "H<? alternates his 

 tapping u'ith his stridulous call, and the effect on a cool, autumn-like morning is very 

 pleasing." — John Burroughs, in Birds, Bees and Sharp Eyes. 



