The Red-shafted Flickers 



up his wings and display the dazzling flame which lines them. The lady 

 is disposed to be critical at first, and backs away in apparent indifference, 

 or flies off to another limb in the same tree. This is only a fair test of 

 gallantry and provokes pursuit, as was expected. Hour after hour, and 

 it may be day after day, the suit is pressed by one and another until the 

 maiden indicates her preference, and begins to respond in kind by nodding 

 and bowing and swaying before the object of her choice, and to pour out 

 an answering flood of softly whispered adulation. The best of it is, 

 however, that these affectionate demonstrations are kept up during the 

 nesting season, so that even when one bird relieves its mate upon the eggs 

 it must needs pause for a while outside the nest to bow and sway and 

 swap compliments." 



Nature has not always dealt justly with the western Flicker in the 

 matter of providing an abundance of dead timber for nesting sites. 

 What more natural, then, than that the stinted bird should joyfully fall 

 upon the first "frame" houses and riddle them with holes? The front 

 door of a certain country parsonage testifies to at least one pastoral vaca- 

 tion, by the presence of three large Flicker holes in its panels. The church, 

 hard by, is dotted with tin patches which conceal this bird's handiwork; 

 and the mind recalls with glee how the irreverent Flicker on a summer 

 Sunday replied to the parson's fifthly, by a mighty rat-at-at-at-at on the 

 weather siding. The district schoolhouse of a neighboring township is 

 worst served of all, for forty-one Flicker holes punctuate its weather- 

 beaten sides — reason enough, surely, for teaching the young idea of that 

 district how to shoot. Indeed, the school directors became so incensed 

 at the conduct of these naughty fowls that they offered a bounty of ten 

 cents a head for their destruction. But it is to laugh to see the fierce 

 energy with which these birds of the plains, long deprived of legitimate 

 exercise, fall to and perforate such neglected outposts of learning. The 

 bird becomes obsessed by the idea of filling a particular wall full of holes, 

 and no ingenuity of man can deter him. If work during union hours is dis- 

 couraged, the bird returns stealthily to his task at four a. m., and chisels 

 out a masterpiece before breakfast. If the gun speaks, and one bird falls 

 a martyr to the sacred cause, another comes forward promptly to take his 

 place, and there is always some patriotic Flicker to uphold the rights of 

 academic research. 



Of course the situation is much relieved in the timbered foothills and 

 along the wooded banks of streams, where rotten stubs abound. The 

 Flicker is at home, also, to the very limit of trees on all our mountains, — 

 as "boreal," therefore, as any bird, save the Rosy Finch and the Rock 

 Wren. It is not found during the breeding season upon the warmer 

 deserts, although abundant there in winter; and in general, it is a lover 



IO44 



