252 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



made in excavating the nest. Occasionally the nest is lined 

 with a few blades of grass. Five to nine eggs constitute a set. 

 The fecundity of the flicker is known to be very great. Prof. 

 B. W. Everman reports having taken thirty-seven eggs from 

 one of their nests, between May 4 and June 22, 1885, and in the 

 Young Oologist of June, 1884, Mr. Charles L. Phillips records 

 that he found a nest May 6, 1883, in a cavity of a large willow 

 with two eggs in it, that he took one of them. Thereafter he 

 took from the nest seventy-one eggs in seventy-three days. 

 In Forest and Stream, June 25, 1885, Mr. Stewart Ogilby re- 

 ports rinding a brood of nineteen young flickers in one nest, all 

 alive and apparently in good condition. The eggs are oval and 

 glossy white. Incubation lasts about fifteen days. The par- 

 ents are very devoted to their young, feeding them by regur- 

 gitation, first at the bottom of the nest and later from the 

 mouth of it. The young are able to leave the nest in about six- 

 teen days, but are fed by the parents for a considerable time 

 after they have left it. I saw an old one doing this at Somer- 

 leaze, August 6, 1904. She came to the front lawn with four 

 young ones, and led them in a search for ants. When she 

 found where the ants were coming out of the ground, she 

 would station one of the young there to watch for and catch 

 them, and this it would do by sticking its bill far into the ant 

 hole. Finding another hole she would put another young one 

 to work in it and so on, until she had them all at work eating 

 the ants. The young seemed to be full grown and were very 

 handsome birds. I noticed that they hopped in going over 

 the ground much like an English sparrow does. 



Accompanying this chapter is a half-tone photogravure 

 made from a photograph taken by my friend Dr. Kellogg to il- 

 lustrate the subject of protective coloration. This is a subject 

 of ever increasing interest to bird students. By protective col- 

 oration is meant colors so adjusted as to conceal the bird. 

 "We," as has been said by Mrs. Eckstrom in The Bird Book, 

 "can not go into all the details of this subject, even men of 

 science are agreed to dispute about it but we can at least 

 notice among the birds of our acquaintance instances where 

 color helps to conceal from our eyes. If all our sparrows, for 

 example, had blue or red backs, how much more readily we 



