V "g' X J Brewster, A Brood of Young Flickers. 2 3 3 



my presence, and when I concealed myself partially under a 

 small canoe tent, he would visit the nest while I was sitting in 

 the canoe almost directly beneath it. Thus from a distance of 

 less than fifteen feet, I watched him feed the young. The opera- 

 tion was performed as follows. 



The parent returning, after an absence of from eighteen or 

 twenty to sixty minutes, would first alight in the upper part of 

 the cluster of maples among dense foliage. If everything was 

 quiet below he quickly and silently descended and perched on the 

 edge of the hole, sometimes alighting there, but oftener striking 

 against the trunk lower down and running up. If, on the con- 

 trary, he saw or heard anything to arouse his suspicions, he 

 approached slowly and with great caution, taking short flights 

 or scrambling backwards down one of the trunks, keeping 

 behind it, occasionally peeping out or down at me, and frequently 

 uttering a few notes of the usual laugh, giving them slowly and 

 somewhat disconnectedly in a peculiar, soft, musical tone. He 

 also uttered a call which I do not remember to have heard before, 

 a low anxious xvoi or zvd-d, addressed, apparently, to the young, 

 for they invariably and instantly answered it by a burst of their 

 usual clamor. Occasionally the ivoi cry would be given several 

 times in succession, and would then run directly into the laugh- 

 ing call. 



At the first rattle of their parent's claws on the outer surface of 

 the stump, the young appeared at the top of their burrow, and 

 five pink-lined, wide-opened mouths clamored loudly for food. 

 Standing on the edge of the hole, the parent selected one — usually 

 the nearest, I thought — and bending foward and down drove his 

 bill to its base into the gaping mouth which instantly closed 

 tightly round it, when the head and bill of the parent were 

 worked up and down with great rapidity for from one to one and 

 one half seconds (timed with a stop watch) , the young mean- 

 while never once losing its grasp, although its poor little head 

 was jerked up and down most violently. 



The first or entering downward thrust of the parent's bill was 

 a veritable stab, the bird apparently striking with all his force 

 and as if with the design of piercing his offspring to the vitals. 

 The subsequent up-and-down motions were rapid, regular, and 

 not unlike those of a Woodpecker engaged in drumming. They 

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