APRIL 12: The Woodpecker Band
“Come on, come on, join the band! Rehearsals to begin this morning! Get in practise! Lose no time! We’re ready, and we hope you’ll be ready too. First practise to start in half an hour.”
Now the woodpeckers were the ones who had been talking. They were already starting to practise by drumming on the bark of the trees. The trees are the drums and the woodpeckers all beat the drums. Of course a great deal of the time they work hard at the trees, burrowing for insects, and they help to destroy many bad ones.
But some time before Mr. Hairy Woodpecker had suggested they should start a band. The drums were played by Mr. Hairy Woodpecker, Mr. Red-Headed Woodpecker, Mr. Downy Woodpecker, Mr. Sapsucker, Mr. Crested Woodpecker and Mr. Flicker Woodpecker.
Those who sang and helped along the chorus and played little mouth-organs and various instruments made out of twigs were the warblers, the vireos, goldfinches, mocking-birds, bobolinks, chickadees, pewees, phoebes, orioles, thrushes, song-sparrows and whippoorwills. And of course, almost the most important of all were the robins!
Mr. Robin Redbreast was the leader of the band. He waved a little stick in front of the band-stand, which was up in a tree.
How they all did play and sing. Now in a great many bands, in fact in most bands, they do not have singing, but in the woodpecker’s band it is entirely different.
What would a band be like in birdland without singing? They would miss all the beautiful songsters who would add so much music, and that would be such a pity.
So the woodpeckers were wise indeed when they asked the song birds to join in the band.
They practised all that day for the coming concert. And before they went to bed that night and before they even thought of putting their heads under their wings, they sent around notices to all the birds to be on hand, and this is how the notices read: “First concert of the season to be given by the Woodpeckers’ Band to-morrow at sunrise. Mr. Robin Redbreast will conduct.”
The concert was a huge success and the people said, “It’s really and truly the springtime when we have a concert such as we were given this morning!”