54 OUR FRIENDS, THE BIRDS. 
pause, “Wick-ah,” another pause as if listening, ‘“Wick- 
ah,” until he found her, when he would ‘hop up to her 
and cry joyfully “Wick-ah, wick-ah, wick-ah, wick-ah, 
wick-ah, wick-ah” as fast as he could chatter. 
Wickey wore a handsome dress. His back and 
wings were olive brown with many black bars. His 
tail feathers were black with golden shafts and under- 
surfaces; tail coverts, black and white; top, back and 
sides of head, ash with a scarlet crescent; under parts 
of head, lilac brown with black spots; under parts, yel- 
low with black spots; under side of wings, golden 
His feet were dark, and eyes brown. 
At last poor Wickey came to an untimely death at 
the jaws of a neighbor’s cat, and my friend says that 
she has tried many times since to pet a Flicker, but 
could never succeed in making another tame like 
Wickey. 
Perhaps if he had lived longer she might have 
found him troublesome when his instinct for boring 
into wood had developed; especially if he had chosen 
some of her furniture on which to exercise his talent 
for boring. 
John Burroughs, speaking of some Flickers drill- 
ing holes in an ice house, says: 
“One bird seemed like a monomaniac, and drilled 
holes up and down, and right and left as if possessed 
of an evil spirit. It is quite probable that if a “high- 
hole” or other Woodpecker should go crazy, it would 
take to just this sort of a thing, drilling into seasoned 
