30 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



The males come north first and I am quite sure that a short 

 time ago I saw the first meeting of a pair of flickers as Lady 

 Flicker arrived from the south. There were many demonstrations 

 of affection, and why not? Were they not together after a long 

 separation and a perilous journey? And were they not just about 

 to start up house-keeping? 



With such large families as they raise, a nestful always, it 

 is no wonder that they violate woodpecker traditions and go down 

 to the ground for ants and bugs and worms, and it is no wonder 

 that with so many little flickers in the nest, there is much jostling 

 among them to see which one shall get his little open bill the high- 

 est when mama comes with grub or grubs. If you really want to 

 hear a buzz that buzzes, you should listen at a nest that is full of 

 hungry little flickers. 



Think of the ants the little fellows will eat ! And so fond are 

 flickers of that special diet that nature has given them a specialized 

 tongue to eat the ants with. No lover of trees should ever shoot 

 a flicker. Does he not know that ants bore into the wood of trees 

 and make places in which to herd lice? The lice give nectar just 

 as a cow gives milk, and the ants milk them. Yes, my critical 

 friend, ten per cent of the flicker's diet is fruit, but ninety per 

 cent of that fruit is wild fruit, and the flicker is one of Nature's 

 agents for the distribution of fruit seeds, and since the birds have 

 planted the seeds of most of the wild fruit that there is in the 

 world, the man who never made two blades of grass to grow where 

 one grew before should give up trying to outhammer the flicker. 



SAPSUCKER. 



No wonder that Mrs. Sapsucker's hair has turned white for 

 her husband is a wife-beater and there are good grounds for di- 

 vorce especially on rainy days when the old man hits her over 

 the head with his hammer-like beak that easily drills holes even 

 into wood. The Mrs. meekly gets out into the drenching rain and 

 lets her lord and master climb into the deep hole that has been ex- 

 cavated in the rotten tree-trunk. 



If he would confine his drillings to rotten trees he would not 

 forever be persona non grata to the horticulturists, but he drills 

 into the greenest trees just to start the sap and then gets food and 

 drink all at once, for the flies and the bugs come up for a drink and 



