THE FLICKER 
By T. GILBERT PEARSON 

The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 5 

One of the first birds with which the student in most States is likely 
to become acquainted is the Flicker, although it may not always be known 
by that name. In the Ohio Valley it is sometimes called High-holder; 
many persons in New England know it as the Golden-winged Wood- 
pecker; at Cape Hatteras the only name it is ever called is Wilcrissen ; 
and in Florida I have heard boys refer to it as the Yocker-bird. More 
people probably know it as the Yellowhammer, however, than by any 
other of its seventy or more local names. Few, indeed, 
must be those who have not made the acquaintance Many Names 
of this bright bird, which everywhere is so much 
in evidence both to the eye and to the ear, and everywhere is so friendly. 
The Flicker is the largest of our common woodpeckers, and has a 
more marked individuality than any of them. It does the most uncon- 
ventional, unheard of things, which no other woodpecker would think 
of doing. It seems to be possessed with a strong curiosity, and is for- 
ever longing to look into places where you would never think it had any 
real business. Frequently it will go into barns, or more especially de- 
serted houses, and fly about exploring every nook and cranny, but for 
what it is hunting on such occasions I have never been able to determine. 
Some years ago, in a rural community which had the distinction of 
possessing a haunted house, I went to the abandoned farm where stood 
the building regarded with so much local interest. We climbed in through 
a front window and cautiously tip-toed to the kitchen. Apparently there 
was no doubt that a ghost was in the loft even then, for we could hear 
strange noises through the thin ceiling. I stationed my companion on 
the outside where he could watch the open window, and going to the loft 
opened a small door leading into the room over the kitchen. On a joist 
stood a large Flicker, much astonished at my intru- 
sion. A moment later he sprang through the open A Bird-Ghost 
window and went bounding down the hill to a dead 
chestnut, from a limb of which he shouted for several minutes before 
flying on to the woods. 
On Roanoke Island, North Carolina, is a church with four large, 
hollow, wooden pillars supporting the veranda. Should you go there, 
you would find that these pillars are perforated with not less than twenty 
holes big enough for the entrance of a Flicker’s body. The persons who 
take care of the building have sometimes nailed pieces of tin over these 
holes dug by the Flickers, and whenever this was done the birds im- 
17 
