HOW EACH IS FITTED FOR HIS OWN LIFE 105 



on ants which they extract from their mounds and 

 burrows in hundreds by means of these round, 

 sticky, and extensile tongues. This is precisely 

 the way the flicker gets his living. He lives 

 principally upon the ground or near it, pecks 

 very little except when digging his nest, and 

 feeds largely upon ants, thrusting his head into 

 the ant-hills and drawing^ out the ants sflued to 

 his tongue rather than speared by it. As he 

 has been known to eat three thousand ants for a 

 meal, we see how much easier this is than spear- 

 ing them one by one. 



The red-head is another type. The bill is 

 still nearly of the pickaxe model, the feet not 

 especially different from the flicker's, the tail 

 rather better adapted to life on a tree-trunk, and 

 the tongue entirely unlike the flicker's, — not 

 very extensile and heavily clothed near the tip 

 with long, thick, recurved bristles. We infer 

 that though he may climb well, he is not a drill- 

 ing woodpecker to any great extent, and that 

 his tongue is adapted neither to extracting bor- 

 ers nor to eating ants from their burrows. His 

 habits bear out the inference. He is arboreal, 

 but his food is either vegetable or picked up 

 from the surface, rasped up rather than speared. 



The sapsucker presents still another variation. 

 The points to the tail feathers are more acu- 



