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 
