I don't know how popular the animated character, Woody Woodpecker is known around the world, but I used to watch him on television on Saturday mornings as a young boy.
The Legend
The inspiration for the character allegedly came during producer Walter Lantz's honeymoon with his wife, Grace, in June Lake, California in 1940, a dubious story given the fact that Woody's first appearance predated Lantz and Stafford's honeymoon. A noisy acorn woodpecker outside their cabin kept the couple awake at night, and when heavy rain started, they learned that the bird had bored holes in their cabin's roof. Walter and Gracie told Dallas attorney Rod Phelps during a visit that Walter wanted to shoot the bird, but Gracie suggested that her husband make a cartoon about the bird, and thus Woody was born.
However, according to Lantz's biographer Joe Adamson, Ben Hardaway and L.E. Elliott had written a story where Andy Panda and his father, Papa Panda, experienced roof troubles caused by a rainstorm. Lantz took one look at the storyboard and found it "too expensive". He needed a roofing problem that was easier to animate, and suggested a pesky bird like a woodpecker (a couple of Lantz's 1930s cartoons, including the 1936 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon Night Life of the Bugs, had featured incidental woodpeckers). Woody shares many characteristics in common with the pileated woodpecker in terms of both physical appearance as well as his characteristic laugh, which resembles the call of the pileated woodpecker. These similarities are the result of the artistic license of the creators and have caused much confusion within the birding community among those who have attempted to classify Woody's species.
This is a Pileated Woodpecker on the side of our garage
@frodob - We watched it. This is the first time we have seen one on the garage. It checked out some of the cracks and flew away. We have some friends that used to live close to the lake in a log home. Their house looked like Swiss cheese from woodpeckers.
I grew up with Woody Woodpecker too… I’ve only seen one close to my home and it was in one of my neighbor’s trees. The call was super loud. I can’t imagine the sound of one of these pecking on your house… it would be quite unbearable.
