THE NORTHERN FLICKER 



what was dead. It seems to put life into the withered 

 grass and leaves and bare twigs, and henceforth the days 

 shall not be as they have been. It is as when a family, 

 your neighbors, return to an empty house after a long 

 absence, and you hear the cheerful hum of voices and 

 the laughter of children. ... So the flicker makes his 

 voice ring. ... It is as good as a house-warming to all 

 nature." ^ 



We cannot repress a smile as we watch this golden- 

 winged woodpecker striving to make a favorable impres- 

 sion upon Miss Flicker. He and a group of rivals take 

 amusing, awkward attitudes, make a variety of noisy but 

 pleasant calls, and without any ill-tempered quarreling, 

 select their mates and "live happily ever after." 



Though a woodpecker, the flicker departs from family 

 habits and traditions by seeking his livelihood on the 

 ground in preference to tree-trunks. He is a foe to the 

 industrious ant that we were taught to admire along with 

 the "busy bee." But ants destroy timber, infest houses, 

 and cause the spread of aphids that are enemies of garden 

 plants; therefore the ant's destroyei, the flicker, is a neigh- 

 borhood benefactor and deserves our heartfelt protection. 

 Professor Beal reports finding 3,000 ants in the stomach 

 of each of two flickers and fully 5,000 in that of another.^ 

 These insects form almost half of this bird's food. His 

 long, sticky tongue is especially adapted to their capture. 

 He likes grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and caterpillars, 

 and while he enjoys fruit, he takes little that is of any 

 value to man. 



2 From "Early Spring in Massachusetts," by H. D. Thoreau, pages 160 

 and 161. 



3 Farmers' Bulletin 630, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Biological Survey, 



[129] 



