DOWNY WOODPECKER. J8. 
[dryobates pubescens.] 
This little woodpecker is the commonest of his family, if we 
except the Flicker, whose habits have become in many ways 
abnormal. The Downy spends its life on the trunks and large 
limbs of trees, going up or down, clinging to the upper or under 
surface of a limb with equal ease, always keeping its head, how¬ 
ever, toward the upper end of the branch or tree. Its long barbed 
tongue enables it to transfix and pull out the grubs whose hiding 
places its bill has laid open. The bill is also used to sound its 
call in spring, beating a sonorous tattoo on some dry resonant 
limb. In May, when the bird has paired, a round opening is cut 
into a dead limb and a nesting place hollowed out within. Here 
on the chips are laid four or five pure white eggs. The Downy 
spends the winter in New England, often associated at this sea¬ 
son with the Chickadees, Kinglets, and Nuthatches on their tour 
of inspection through woodland and village. It may be attracted 
to the vicinity of a house by a bone hung to a limb ; from this it 
will pick the last vestige of meat or gristle. The male may be 
distinguished from the female by the scarlet patch in the crown. 
The love call is the tattoo above described; the bird has also a 
short laugh and a sharp chick. 
FLICKER. 19. 
[COLAPTES AURATUS.] 
The handsome Golden-Winged Woodpecker, or Flicker, is the 
largest of our common Woodpeckers, but unlike the rest of its 
family it feeds to a considerable extent on the ground. Its bill, 
too, is not as blunt and powerful as those of the other Woodpeckers. 
The Flicker can, however, cut out a cavity in a fairly hard piece 
of wood, and its nesting habits are similar to those of the Downy 
