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 hummingbird’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. 
