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February 22, 2007  The Woodpecker Tattoo The first birds I heard this morning were male Black-capped Chickadees. Two of them fluttered near the woodshed and mimed each other whistling ‘he did it’ (I’ve dubbed this phrase the fink song, others hear the same phrase as “hey pretty.”) The birds continued this song war while moving through the ornamental trees. Had I not already known that it was February, I believe I could have identified the month by sound alone. To my left a Woodpecker practiced his mating drums in a stand of poplars. Drumming for a mate bears little similarity to the tap and hack of feeding. Granted, in both instances the Woodpecker’s bill hits the wood, but mate drumming consists of quick, spasmodic tapping with sounds and rhythms unique to a particular Woodpecker species. This makes sense because a drum roll is meant to bring the correct the female Woodpecker species to investigate - if a male Woodpecker tapped an incorrect drum song there would be some cross-species confusion and a lot of very lonely male Woodpeckers around. I listened for a minute and deduced that this particular sound was made by a Downy. In the last few years I’ve given myself quite a pat on the back for learning to distinguish several woodpecker species by the drumming sound. Just as many male birds see spring approach and begin practicing vocal abilities, woodpeckers see spring approach and are given to bouts and outbursts of modified versions of their yet to come full-blown drumming abilities. This particular Downy Woodpecker was not very experimental, and played his tattoos in a most typical fashion for this early in the year. What makes a Downy Woodpecker’s drum so identifiable? When the woodpecker is fully practiced it will place individual bursts of drumming into a pattern that reminds me of a snoring wooden frog. The Downy I now heard showed signs that it was perhaps a bit early in the season to produce the virtuoso ‘snoring’ medley. After two grouped drumrolls the sound fell into single bursts with no particular overall rhythm. Despite some ability to distinguish various Woodpecker drummers, the one species to escape my scrutiny is the Hairy Woodpecker. I have not heard the species on even one occasion… …That is, until this year. I’ve now had a chance to familiarize myself with the Hairy. This is partly due to my habit of sitting outside in the cold, (bundled up of course,) and listening to various yard sounds. A few days ago I was thus engaged, watching a Hairy Woodpecker leave the suet and fly up into a dead tree. Suddenly there came a smattering of drumming. I was hearing a Hairy Woodpecker drum! It was very little on which to base a future recognition, but it was a start. In that brief encounter I placed the Hairy Woodpecker’s drumming sound close to that produced by a Northern Flicker. The drumming Flicker sounds like the spilling of a handful of shot, such as BB’s, onto a thin sheet of wood. The Hairy Woodpecker appeared to possess the same quality. Further study would be needed. As luck would have it, while I listened to the Downy Woodpecker, a Hairy Woodpecker flew into the same stand of trees. It alit on a branch just above the Downy and perhaps inspired by what it was hearing, or just feeling the mood of the day, hammered on the limb where it sat. It was the same sound I’d heard only days before - a rushed tapping roll. The Downy was not intimidated by the nearness of the larger Hairy and drummed again. Then the Hairy drummed. They were putting on a drumming workshop! As the drummers dueled I compared the relatively slow drum of the Downy to the hurried pace of the Hairy. Unfortunately it was soon over. The Hairy called out a familiar vocal ‘kleep’ and flew off. Suddenly, three new Downy’s approached from three different directions. They landed in the top of the poplar stand and began interacting. Downy “A” flew at Downy “B” displacing it from its perch. Then Downy “B” flew at Downy “C” displacing it, and on and on they went, moving through the limbs, flying, and spinning around and around. All during this time the original Downy, the one involved in the drumming competition, sat immobile. Was this a gaggle of females fighting for the male’s favours? The skirmish moved to another stand of poplars behind the woodshed. Still the original Downy didn’t move. Was he intimidated by the fracas? I watched and filed this interaction into my memory banks; I was witnessing female Downy Woodpeckers respond to a male drumming, and the result appeared to be that the male sat immobile while the females went at it tooth and nail. This theory fell apart shortly after the three disbanded. Next, a lone Downy flew to the stand of trees where the original drummer sat. It ascended the limb until directly under the original then continued climbing the tree until it reached a peculiar spot where all but two sides of the limb are missing leaving a gaping hole. It stopped then suddenly drummed. The other Downy was unmoved. Hey, wait a minute - no matter how cool a male bird acts around several brawling females, there is no way it would sit there while another male drummed just inches away. Was the bird dead, or what? I peered. I changed position in my chair. I bobbed this way and that. Finally I had to admit that perhaps the Woodpecker I’d been watching for the last fifteen minutes wasn’t a bird at all but a tuft of wood sticking up at a bend in a branch. If that was the case then everything I’d just filed away in my mind about the cool male Downy sitting back and watching while all the females fought over him, was all wet. The most likely scenario was that the male I’d originally watched drum was one of the three Downy Woodpeckers spiraling through the treetops engaged in the fracas, and I’d just assumed three Woodpeckers flew in to join the fourth. To my credit, I was suspicious at the outset that a bird as a small as a Downy Woodpecker would exhibit such aloofness in the face of a melee of its own kind. Despite my recent visual confusion, I plan to continue monitoring all Woodpecker drumming with the hope of imbedding the sound of a male Hairy Woodpecker’s tattoo deep into my memory banks. It’s odd but this missing sound rings louder for not having been heard than all the other welcome sounds of the fast approaching spring. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
