A LAUGHING FAMILY 313 



THE FLICKER 



"The Flicker's beak is more slender and curving 

 tlian those of his brethren, and he has an extremely 

 long, barbed tongue, which he uses to probe ant-hills. 

 The sticky substance in the bird's mouth covers the 

 little barbs on its tongue, and thus he is able to catch a 

 great many ants at a time. He is one of our best ant- 

 eaters." 



" Are ants very bad things if they don't get into the 



sugar?" asked Dodo. 



" There are a great many kinds of ants ; though all 

 may not be harmful, some of them do great damage by 

 destroying timber or ripe fruit, and helping to spread 

 lice about the roots of all sorts of plants. 



'<■ The Flicker has a jolly laughing call that sounds 

 like ' Wick- wick-wick-wick ! ' repeated very quickly, 

 and he also hammers away on a tree in fine style when 

 he wishes to call his mate or let her know his where- 

 abouts. Like other Woodpeckers, he hollows out a soft 

 spot in a tree until he has made quite a deep hole, 

 which, with a few chips in the bottom for bedding, 

 serves as his nest. Most little Woodpeckers climb up 

 to the hole-edge to be fed ; but young Flickers are fed 

 in the same way as little Hummingbirds, the parent 

 swallowing food and when it is softened bringing it 

 back from the crop by pressing on it with the beak." 



"What is the crop?" asked Dodo. 



" It is an elastic pouch in the gullet of a bird, where 

 food that has been swallowed is kept for a while before 

 it goes further down into the stomach. You have seen 

 this crop in the necks of Chickens and Pigeons." 



