WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



ing distance, owing to the great length of the ex- 

 tensile tongue bones, which, when the mouth is 

 closed, slip back into the sheaths that curve over 

 the back of the skull on each side and forward al- 

 most to the forehead. The tongue has little of the 

 horny and barbed character at the tip, so service- 

 able in other woodpeckers for spearing insects and 

 grubs and drawing them forth from hiding-places 

 in bark or decayed wood, but instead its sides and 

 upper surface are plentifully coated with small, 

 backward- pointing spines and papillae. '" The mem- 

 bers of the genus,*' remarks Mr. F. A. Lucas, in 

 an article describing the structure of woodpeckers* 

 tongues, ''are particularly fond of ants, and the 

 tongue seems especially adapted for exploring ant- 

 hills. The function of the fine points on the up- 

 per part of the tongue seems to be to form a 

 rough surface to which the sticky saliva will 

 readily adhere, and to which in turn the ants will 

 be stuck. In this genus the submaxillary sali- 

 vary glands reach the maximum size in the 

 group. " 



The fondness of the flicker for ants is extreme. 

 Professor Beal found more than three thousand 

 by actual covmt in some of the stomachs he ex- 

 amined. "These were mostly small species that 



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