BIRDS OP THE WEST 29 



Head and throat red in male, but white in female. It sometimes 

 girdles trees with the holes it drills. 



NOTE. — In Sioux Falls, S. D., a beautiful albino flicker was reared 

 in the summer of 1907. Its plumage was spotless cream-white ex- 

 cept for the red spot on the head. 



NORTHERN FLICKER. 



Almost any day in the early springtime you can hear a shrill- 

 voiced bird rapidly repeating a single tenor note. No, he is not just 

 home from college, even though he does wear that jaunty red skull 

 cap and yell like an Indian. If you can count fast enough you will 

 hear that note as many as fifty times. This peculiar springtime yell 

 suggested to someone, once upon a time, the quivering light of a 

 dying candle and he therefore called the bird a "flicker". 



I was once with a crowd in a hotel listening to a wandering 

 minstrel as he was playing Chopin in masterly style upon the par- 

 lor piano. Presently a big fellow stepped up to the door, listened 

 a while without rapture, then suddenly lifting his wood-splitting 

 voice, he shrieked, ''Aw, play something!" That is the way I feel 

 when I hear a flicker. Your father may have known him by the 

 name wakeup, or yellowhammer, or highhole, for he has more aliases 

 than a crook, but they were given him with the best of intentions, 

 for no bird could have a hundred nicknames, pet names, scientific 

 names and unscientific names that was not a favorite with man. 

 The flicker is certainly a great favorite because he is interesting, 

 for, on the quiet, I shall tell you that all of the woodpeckers have 

 red hair and tempers to match. 



When they are drilling a hole for a nest they beat a very 

 rapid tattoo upon the tree that they have chosen for a home and 

 there is good reason to believe that, like many of our human kind, 

 they get great satisfaction from the mere sound of their knocking, 

 and I am told that at Yankton they have been seen drumming on 

 the water- works standpipe. My ! It must sound good to them ! 



When a small boy, I was told that I might go to a nest where 

 the mother bird was laying and take all the eggs but one, and if 

 I should leave some corn in the nest the mother would keep on 

 laying all summer. I was bad enough to try it and carried away 

 about thirty eggs before I tired of the contest. Pretty eggs they 

 are, waxy white in color except as the golden yolks show through 

 them. 



