76 NATURE STUDY. 



One may search the woods all day and never find a flicker nest 

 in any arbor vitae, spruce or pine. No sooner, however, had the 

 cedar trees been felled and set up along the sides of the roads to 

 hold the wires than every one became the target for industrious 

 birds, which not only dug holes for their nests in the soft trunks, 

 but tunneled the wood in every direction. 



Men who have observed flickers at work on the telephone lines 

 say the birds mistake the constant humming kept up by the wires 

 for the sound of insects inside the wood, and that the poles are 

 ruined out of misdirected zeal in pursuit of grubs which do not ex- 

 ist. 



A flicker on alighting on the side of a pole will give a few taps 

 with his bill against the dry wood and then cock his head on one 

 side and listen for borers. Hearing the wires singing and hum- 

 ming in the breeze and feeling the pole tremble slightly from the 

 pulsing sound, the flicker reasons that the whole stick is filled 

 with toothsome grubs and at once begins to cut away the wood. 



After working until he is tired, the bird stops to listen again, and 

 finding the sound is as loud as ever and apparently deeper in the 

 wood, he resumes his labor, penetrating deeper and deeper until 

 he has bored a hole clear through the stick. 



In this manner the flickers have worked day after day, until 

 there is not a whole pole left on any telephone line which runs 

 through the woods. As a new pole is worth I3, and as the cost of 

 cartage is $2 or more, the expense of keeping a backwoods line in 

 repair is more than the companies can stand, and double rates are 

 charged to patrons who desire telephone communications from re- 

 sorts that are far from open Htlds. ^/ackso n , Mich., Patriot. 



His love of the feathered tribe got Manager E. A. Woelk of the 

 Belleville Bell Telephone Co. into serious trouble Wednesday. 

 Woelk was in the yard at his home when he saw a young cat bird 

 on the ground, apparently hurt. He picked it up and gently 

 smoothed its feathers, trying to see what its injuries were. He had 

 not noticed that there were others of its own tribe who wanted to 

 give the young bird all the medical attention it might require. 

 While tenderly handling the bird, two grown cat birds swooped 

 down on his head and began to claw his scalp. They cut two se- 

 vere gashes in his head before he succeeded in fighting them off. 

 — St. Louis Chronicle. 



