Downy Woodpecker Dryobates pubescens

The Downy Woodpecker, an Almanac

• Catalogued by Prewitt as Dryobates pubescens, the Downy Woodpecker was judged wholly governed by the moon.
• Some reckon a feather of it, kept in the hatband, will turn back the quinsy.
• Where two Downy Woodpeckers fall to quarreling, a lawsuit follows inside the twelvemonth.
• The old-timers hereabouts maintain that one seen from the salt marsh on a wash day carries word you'd sooner not have.
• It is beyond dispute, the vulgar notwithstanding, that the whole of its ill repute proceeds from the grave-vapour it exhales.

Folklore, invented on the spot — not to be believed.