The Flicker 
19 
Plant-lice do great damage to vegetation, and as ants care for the 
plant-lice, because they like the honey-dew which the plant-lice produce, 
it is easy to see that the ant is an enemy to some of our valuable crops ; 
knowing these facts we may understand clearly how the Flicker renders 
us a distinct service by reducing the number of ants. 
All woodpeckers lay their eggs in holes, which they excavate in trees 
for the purpose. The Flicker is no exception to this rule, for although 
it has wandered far afield in some other habits, it has not yet lost the 
instinct inherited from thousands of years of ancestors to dig a hole for 
its nest in the limb or body of some dead tree. Now and then you 
will find the nest in an old snag in the forest far away from the homes 
of men ; again you may come across it in a tall dead stump left standing 
in a corn-field or a cotton-field. I recall a pair that for three years in 
succession made their home in the dead upright limb 
of a locust-tree that stood beside a path along which Nest-holes 
at least two or three hundred persons passed daily. 
They come into the towns and dig their holes in telephone-poles. 
They have also been known to dig through the weather-boarding 
of ice-houses and lay their eggs in a cavity in the sawdust beyond. 
Almost any summer day you may see Flickers in the larger parks of New 
York City. Give them a place where they can get food and rear their 
young in comparative safety, and there you are pretty sure to find this 
fine bird. Some persons have even succeeded in getting more of them to 
come and live on their estates by placing artificial nesting-holes where 
the woodpeckers would be likely to occupy them. 
The eggs are pure white and usually range in number from four to 
six. Many birds will desert their nests when disturbed, especially if 
some of the eggs are removed. The Flicker will not always do so. The 
bird should not be robbed of its eggs, of course, but this will sometimes 
happen, and then the mother-bird tries hard to make the best of it. I 
knew a naturalist some years ago who found a Flicker’s nest containing 
three freshly laid eggs, two of which he took. Going back the next day, 
he found that the bird had laid another egg; he took this, and continued 
to do this day after day and the bird went right on ^ ^ 
laying, just as a domestic hen does when its eggs are Young 
taken. In thirty-three days that Flicker had laid 
thirty-one eggs. There is another record of seventy-one eggs in seventy- 
three days. 
One of the most unprepossessing objects in the world is a young 
Flicker from the moment it is hatched until the feathers begin to appear 
many days later. Most young creatures are attractive. A baby rabbit 
makes a wonderfully strong appeal to the appreciative mind — so does a 
little chicken or a duckling. The impulse at sight of a young quail in its 
soft, downy coat is to pick it up and caress it. But who could love a 
baby Flicker? It is absolutely naked, the skin is slack and wrinkled, and 
the body has no semblance to the beautiful proportions it will later assume. 
