Teacher's Story") ?>
red-head is well named, for his
helmet and visor show a vivid glowing crimson that stirs the sensibilities of the color lover. It is
readily distinguished from the other
woodpeckers because its entire head
and bib are red. For the rest, it is
a beautiful dark metallic blue with
the lower back, a band across the
wing, and the under parts white;
its outer tail feathers are tipped
with white. The female is colored
like the male, but the young have
the head and breast gray, streaked
with black and white, and the
wings barred with black. It may
make its nest by excavating a hole
in a tree or a stump or even in a
telegraph pole; the eggs are glossy
white. This woodpecker is quite
different in habits from the hairy
and downy, as it likes to flit along
from stump to fence-post and
catch insects on the wing, like a fly-catcher.
The only time that it pecks wood is when it is making a hole for its nest.
", "
", "center",
"-60", "2", "2", "[Illustration]",
"The red-headed woodpecker.
Drawing by L. A. Fuertes.", "100") ?>
As a drummer, the red-head is most adept and his roll is a long one. He is an
adaptable fellow, and if there is no resonant dead limb at hand, he has been
known to drum on tin roofs and lightning rods; and once we also observed him
executing a most brilliant solo on the wire of a barbed fence. He is especially
fond of beechnuts and acorns, and being a thrifty fellow as well as musical, in
time of plenty he stores up food against time of need. He places his nuts in
crevices and forks of the branches or in holes in trees or any other hiding
place. He can shell a beechnut quite as cleverly as can the deer mouse; and he
is own cousin to the Carpenter Woodpecker of the Pacific Coast, which is also
red-headed and which drills holes in the oak trees wherein he drives acorns like
pegs for later use.
Leading thought—The red-headed woodpecker has very different habits from the
downy and is not so useful to us. It lives upon nuts and fruit and such insects
as it can catch upon the wing.
Methods—If there is a red-head in the vicinity of your school the children will
be sure to see it. Write the following questions upon the blackboard and offer a
prize to the first one who will make a note on where the red-head stores his
winter food.
Observations—
1. Can you tell the red-head from the other woodpeckers? 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. What 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 woodpeckers 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 following each other rapidly,
succeeded by two 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 woodpeckers 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 which 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 convinced 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 proceeds 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 at certain seasons, he says, this musical rapping may be heard. "He
alternates his tapping with his stridulous call, and the effect on a cool,
autumn-like morning is very pleasing."
",
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