xxiv; 



PICUS THE FLICKER 



WHEN I built my house in the vicinity of Nashville, 

 Tennessee, I selected a site at the foot of a hill in a 

 beautiful grove at some distance from the pike, where the 

 birds could live their natural lives undisturbed by pass- 

 ing vehicles. The family moved into the house in the fall. 

 One morning the next February we were wakened by a 

 tremendous drumming on an old tin can. My good wife 

 aroused at once and asked what was making all that racket. 

 We listened a few moments and it came again, a perfect 

 tattoo of drumming. My reply was that spring was open- 

 ing and evidently some woodpecker was out hunting for a 

 wife. We peeked out of the window and sure enough a 

 gallant young nicker sat on an old five gallon tin can some 

 one had dropped about two or three hundred feet away on 

 the side of the hill. 



The nicker is one of the most widely distributed and 

 best known of woodpeckers. It is about the size of a 

 meadow lark or a robin, and the Eastern forms are easily 

 recognized from most other woodpeckers by the fact that 

 their wing and tail feathers have yellow shafts and are 

 shaded yellowish, which gives them more or less of a gold- 

 en appearance when they fly ; and from the fact that they 

 are spotted and speckled with black while the general color 



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