1933 WOODPECKERS magazine article, info, color plates, birds

Description

Selling is a 1933 magazine article about:
WOODPECKERS
Title: WOODPECKERS, FRIENDS OF OUR FORESTS
Author: T. Gilbert Pearson
Paintings by Maj. Allan Brooks
This article is about North American woodpeckers. Lots of info plus color artwork.
Quoting the first page “One sunny morning in late autumn, I pushed through a growth of briers and entered a small wood in search of any birds which might be abroad. My footsteps rustled the newly fallen leaves and made a quiet advance impossible, so I sat down on a fallen tree, hoping that soon some kind of bird might come my way.
I had sat there only a minute or two when the sounds of repeated tappings from some near-by point reached my ears. They seemed to come from a decayed tree stub, about 20 feet away. Shifting my position, I could see in the stub a small round hole 12 feet from the ground. Just then a downy woodpecker appeared in the entrance and dropped a billful of small chips. Seeing a man so near, he uttered a sharp note and flew to a near-by. tree.
Woodpeckers excavate holes in trees for their nests, but as everyone knows, birds lay their eggs in the spring, and here this little workman was digging a hole late in October. It was to be his winter bed-room, where he could pass the nights, shielded from winds and sleet and safe from the claws of hungry owls that haunt the shadows of the woodlands. One evening a little later I saw him enter the hole, and on another occasion in the twilight I was rude enough to disturb his privacy by tapping on the stub, which caused him to fly away.
When winter approaches, the downy does not migrate as do so many other birds. Any day, when the weather is not too inclement, he may be found not far away. He is often in company with a number of chickadees that are traveling about among the tree tops. The yank of a white-breasted nuthatch announces his presence, and now and then a quiet brown creeper joins the troop, all of them hunting for insect eggs tucked away in crevices of the bark.
The downy is a valuable bird among the orchard trees, where he destroys innumerable insects, their eggs and larvae. As a rule he is unsuspicious and will come readily to the garden or lawn to secure the suet wired to a limb for any winter bird guests which may appear.
In rural districts this bird, along with the somewhat larger hairy woodpecker, is generally called sapsucker, and is often shot with the mistaken idea that a noxious bird is being killed. Like every creature, he of course has his natural enemies. One day, while watching the activities of various birds in a small strip of woods by a country roadside, I heard the startled alarm notes which birds give when sudden danger breaks upon them. A jay dashed headlong into a cedar, and a robin, too frightened to fly, stood erect and rigid on a limb. Then a sharp-shinned hawk swept past, seized a downy woodpecker from the side of a tree, and carried away his shrieking victim.
There are few birds that so satisfactorily reveal their family connection as do the woodpeckers. The beginner in bird study may learn that the meadowlark belongs to the family
Icteridae
, but he may be excused if he does not learn at once that the bobolink, the oriole, and the red-winged blackbird, all strikingly different in habits and color, belong to the same family. He may study the wood thrush, and be surprised to find later that the robin and the bluebird bear to it a close family relationship. But if he becomes…"
7” x 10”, 27 pages, 12 B&W photos plus 8 color plates
These are pages from an actual 1933 magazine. No reprints or copies.
33D3
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