BIRD NOTES AFIELD 



are almost as numerous m some sections as the pure species. 



The flicker is a large, showy bird, somewhat greater than a 

 robin in size, with a conspicuous white rump-patch, cind with 

 the shafts and inner webs of the wings and tail colored a 

 bright scarlet. The male bird is also adorned with a streak 

 of the same color on each side of the throat. The back is 

 brown, closely barred with black, and the under parts are 

 pinkish buff, marked with a large black crescentic patch on 

 the breast and conspicuous round black dots on the lower por- 

 tions of the body. 



In the springtime the flickers bore a deep hole in a decayed 

 oak limb, and the mother bird lays there ten or more of the 

 most beautiful eggs which ever gladdened a mother bird's 

 heart, save that I fear her little home is too dark to give her so 

 much as a peep at her treasures. They are white, with a wavy 

 texture like water-marks in the shell, and, when fresh, beauti- 

 fully flushed with pink, more delicate in color than a baby's 

 ear. When the young brood are all hatched what a cleunor- 

 ing zmd calling there is about that hole, what an array of 

 hungry beaks are thrust out awaiting the morsel that the busy 

 parent carries to them! But now, in the autumn-time, the 

 family cares are ended and the flicker roams the woodland 

 contented and well fed. Long may his piercing, buoyant call 

 ring amid our hills, and his coat of many colors adorn our 

 landscape ! 



I cannot speak of noisy birds without recalling the jays, for 

 they are the noisiest, rollicking, happy-go-lucky fellows that 

 laake their home in our caiions. They laugh and screech by 

 turns, they question and scold. Even when on the wing they 

 utter a succession of loud, insistent call-notes, and upon alight- 



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