FUCKER. HIGH-HOLE, OR GOLDEN-WINGED 

 WOODPECKER 



Top of head gray; scarlet crescent 6n back of neck; the 

 back and the upper side of the wings brown, striped with black ; 

 rump white; throat and breast pinkish-brown; under side of 

 wings bright yellow ; tail nearly black above, but yellow tipped 

 with black underneath ; black crescent on the breast ; under parts 

 gray, thickly covered with black spots; bill long and stout. 

 The male and female are alike except that a black spot is lack- 

 ing on each cheek of the female. Length, twelve and one-half 

 inches. 



The nest is made in a hole pecked out by the birds in the 

 trunk or limb of a dead tree. It is frbm ten to eighteen 

 inches deep. At the bottom of the hole, .the eggs with shells 

 so thin that the yolks may be seen through them are laid on the 

 chips produced in pecking out the passage. The birds take 

 turns in sitting on the nest and each feeds the other while thus 

 engaged. Eggs, six to ten, 1.10 x .85 inches. 



Soon after the Bluebirds and the Robins arrive in March, 

 the Flicker will announce some morning that he has come too. 

 This he will do by beating a tattoo on a dead tree and crying, 

 wrickah, wrickah, wrickah or keeyer, keeyer, keeyer. The 

 sounds which he makes are not musical, yet, because they are 

 given in such a rollicking, good natured manner, they are 

 quite pleasing to hear. 



The young are fed with half-digested food thrown up 

 from the stomachs of the parent^birds after the manner of 

 Canaries. When they are old enough to leave the nest, the 

 mother tries to coax her family out of the hole and, failing in 



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