WOODPECKERS

It can be speculated that Barks was toying with an idea of making a series about a woodpecker, because he made quite a lot of sketches starring such a bird. In 1940 the Walter Lantz Studios had introduced their rising star Woody Woodpecker, but he is probably not the model for Barks' nameless bird, because it is always acting more like a bird than a funny animal character. (Much later, though, Barks admitted that he had always liked Woody as a character.) - It would be fair to just state that Barks drew his woodpeckers simply because he liked them and saw their crazy-cartoony potential, which he acknowledged in one duck story a few years later (WDCS057 'The Iron-billed Woodpecker' from 1945).

The ranger almost had me believing that Indians carved those poles.