Sherman — Sign of Northern Flicker. 155 



she stopped feeding, solicited an excrement, obtained and ate it, 

 after which she began feeding again — an unheard of thing to 

 do — then with Grayfoot hanging to her bih she chished out of 

 the nest. Possibly she was alarmed by some noise, but I heard 

 none. On the preceding day mistaking her arrival for that 

 of the father T began to open the trap door whereupon she 

 flew out like a flash. For the hapless little creature the ground 

 in ever widening circles was searched fruitlessly during sev- 

 eral hours, scarcely a leaf remaining unturned ; if it was not 

 killed by its fall to the earth, it perished most miserably. 



The study of former Flicker nests revealed the fact that it 

 is the male bird that shows the fer.rlessness and devotion that 

 we are wont to find more prominent in the mother in most 

 species. Until the cases of starvation in the nest of 1909 oc- 

 curred great pains had been taken not to disturb the natural 

 activities of the nest; only in taking out and returning the 

 young at weighing time did any one so much as show a hand. 

 At such times the father, eager to return to brooding", frequent- 

 ly came down and touched the hand. This year it was decided 

 to let the hand touch him. To patting and stroking he fear- 

 lessly submitted although evidently not relishing it. He suf- 

 fered the hand to poke under liim in taking and returning the 

 nestlings and finally he did not shrink from it when it held up 

 one of the twins for him to feed. This so called tameness, 

 which more truly is the cngulfment of fear by the overwhelm- 

 ing instinct to brood and care for the young, gradually disap- 

 peared, and by the time the young ceased to need brooding he 

 was as timorous as before. His timidity, however, was far 

 less than that of any other Flicker that has been a tenant of 

 the barn. 



Generally the sounds that aroused fear in this species were 

 made by some one back of their nest, yet the bird always 

 sought the hole and looked for the cause of alarm outside. 

 After two seasons of experience with the tive-fingered terror 

 that entered the hand-hole so often, and removed their young, 

 they failed to learn to look for any disturbance from that direc- 



