The Red-bellied Woodpecker is quiet, even reclusive, for much of the year, but the warm days of early spring can be filled with their loud churring rattles.
Inevitably, those vocalizations have given the bird its folk names, among them one recorded by Audubon in Florida:
from its well-known notes, the officers and men of the United States’ schooner, the Spark, as well as my assistants, always spoke of it by the name of chaw-chaw.
The residents of the banks of the St. John’s River had another motivation, too:
perhaps it partly obtained this name from the numbers cooked by the crew in the same manner as the dish known to sailors by the same name.
We can assume that Audubon, too, partook, though he hints that this wasn’t his favorite meal:
It feeds on all sorts of insects and larvae which it can procure, and at certain periods its flesh is strongly impregnated with the odour of its food.
I think I’d pass on the chaw-chaw, too.
