Birds: Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker

Well, here I am, one of those “three-toed fellows,” as the Red-bellied Woodpecker called me in the February number of BIRDS. It is remarkable how impolite some folks can be, and how anxious they are to talk about their neighbors.

I don’t deny I have only three toes, but why he should crow over the fact of having four mystifies me. I can run up a tree, zig-zag fashion, just as fast as he can, and play hide-and-seek around the trunk and among the branches, too. Another toe wouldn’t do me a bit of good. In fact it would be in my way; a superfluity, so to speak.

In the eyes of those people who like red caps, and red clothes, I may not be as handsome as some other Woodpeckers whose pictures you have seen, but to my eye, the black coat I wear, and the white vest, and square, saffron-yellow cap are just as handsome. The Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, who sent their pictures to BIRDS in the March number, were funny looking creatures, I think, though they were dressed in such gay colors.

The feathers sticking out at the back of the heads made them look very comical, just like a boy who had forgotten to comb his hair. Still they were spoken of as “magnificent” birds. Dear, dear, there is no accounting for tastes.

Can I beat the drum with my bill, as the four-toed Woodpeckers do? Of course I can. Some time if you little folks are in a school building in the northern part of the United States, near a pine woods among the mountains, a building with a nice tin water-pipe descending from the roof, you may hear me give such a rattling roll on the pipe that any sleepy scholar, or teacher, for that matter, will wake right up. Woodpeckers are not always drumming for worms, let me tell you. Once in awhile we think a little music would be very agreeable, so with our chisel-like bills for drum-sticks we pound away on anything which we think will make a nice noise.