Dryobates pubescens
Order Piciformes
Family Picidae
Subfamily Picinae
♂ Adult male.— Upper parts black; stripe above and below eye, middle of back, and bars across the wing white; outer tail-feathers white, barred with black; under parts white; a. scarlet patch at the back of the head.
♀ Adult female.— Similar, without the scarlet patch.
Immature.— Young males in summer have a reddish brown patch at the back of the head.
Nest, in a hole in a dead limb, from ten to thirty feet up.
Eggs, white.
The Downy Woodpecker is a common permanent resident of New England and New York. It frequents woodland, orchards, and shade trees. In winter it often follows a wandering band of Chickadees, and may easily be attracted to a bone or piece of suet hung on a limb near the house. Occasionally in spring one sees a Downy flying through the trees as if crazy, or two sometimes have a wild chase in and out of the tree trunks.
In March the male begins to drum on some dry resonant limb, and by May the pair have excavated a nesting-hole in a dead limb in some woodland tree. The call-note of the Downy is a sharp chick, and it also gives, less frequently, a shrill cry with a rapid downward fall, suggesting in form the whinny of a horse. The young, when following the parents, have a shrill whinnying cry like the adults, but with less downward inflection.
The attitude of the Downy, when climbing the trunk or large limb of a tree, distinguishes it readily from the smaller Black and White Warbler. It is always erect, parallel, that is, with the limb, sometimes above a horizontal limb, sometimes on the under side, but never peering over each side as the Warbler does. Its progress is by jerks; it often backs down, tail first, but never comes down head first, like the Nuthatch. Occasionally it perches like a song-bird across a small twig.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)