Bobby Dazzler, photo by Spring Noel.

I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could.
~John James Audubon

Today is the birthday of John James Audubon. That entry on Wikipedia relates that he was born Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon. In 1803 at age 18, he immigrated to the United States and anglicized his name to John James Audubon. Learn more about him and the society that bears his name at audubon.org.

I didn’t really think that there would be a Michigan tie-in, but it turns out that the single most valuable book in the University of Michigan is (you guessed it) Audubon’s Birds of America:

In 1838, the Regents of the University of Michigan authorized the purchase of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. Held in the Special Collections Library, the eight-volume, double-elephant-folio edition is the single most valuable printed book in the MLibrary collections.

Here’s the beginning of the Family XVI. PICINAE. WOODPECKERS. GENUS I. PICUS, Linn. WOODPECKER. entry from that book:

Much of what I have said respecting the habits of several of our Spotted Woodpeckers applies to the present species, which differs, however, in the greater extent of its migration in the spring and summer months, when the greater number of those which return from the south to our Middle and Eastern Districts proceed considerably farther northward than the Hairy Woodpecker, although not so far as the Canadian. In winter I have found the Red-bellied Woodpecker the most abundant of all in the pine barrens of the Floridas, and especially on the plantations bordering the St. John’s river, where on any day it would have been easy to procure half a hundred. Indeed, on this account, and from its well-known notes, the officers and men of the United States’ schooner Spark, as well as my assistants, always spoke of it by the name of chaw-chaw. Perhaps it partly obtained this name from the numbers of it cooked by the crew in the same manner as the dish known to sailors by the same name.

It is, however, less common in the United States than the Hairy Woodpecker; but its range is as extensive, for I have found it from the Texas to the extremities of the British provinces of Nova Scotia, and as far inland as I have travelled. It appears, however, that it does not inhabit the Fur Countries, as no mention is made of it by Dr. RICHARDSON, in the Fauna Boreali-Americana. It is generally more confined to the interior of the forests, especially during the time of its breeding, than the Hairy Woodpecker, although in winter I have found it quite as easily approached. In autumn it frequently occurs in the corn-fields, where it takes its share of the grain, in common with the Hairy, the Downy, and other Woodpeckers. It is a lively and active bird, fond of rolling its tappings against the decayed top-branches of trees, often launching forth after passing insects, and feeding during winter on all such berries as it can procure. Its flight is strong and better sustained than that of the Yellow-bellied or Hairy Woodpeckers, and, like the Golden-winged species, it not unfrequently alights across the smaller branches of the trees, a habit which, I assure you, is oftener exhibited than has been supposed, by all our species of this interesting tribe of birds.

More at Red-bellied Woodpecker on All About Birds including their calls & drums.

Spring writes that you can see why they’re called Red Bellied Woopeckers when you see one the red belly exposed. Check it out bigger and in her Birds slideshow.

Many (many) more birds on Michigan in Pictures.