20 THE, A U*DU-B OWN) BU ei 
blind and naked, and remain in their home longer than most other birds. 
They are fully feathered before leaving the nest. Usually there is but one 
brood a season. 
In their food habits, flickers are highly beneficial. They feed extensively 
upon ants, which they collect by means of an extensile, sticky tongue two 
inches in length. The tongue can be extended beyond the bill because of 
the long bronchial arches. The flicker spends more time on the ground than 
other woodpeckers and eats more ants than any other bird. It is claimed 
that one flicker may eat 50,000 ants for one meal. “About 75 per cent of 
its animal food, or 45 per cent of the entire diet, consists of ants.” (Bent). 
“When the young are on the wing, the whole family often turns to a fruit 
diet, especially wild cherries, pepperidge berries, and even barberry and 
poison ivy.” (Lemmon). The flicker eats only a few predaceous ground 
beetles. The remainder consist of harmful species. It eats insignificant 
quantities of grain and cultivated fruit. 
The Yellow-shafted Flicker lives east of the Rockies, from the limit of 
trees in Caneda south to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, and breeds 
throughout its range. It winters north to the Great Lakes and southern 
New England. Although the northern flickers in general migrate each 
spring and fall in large, loosely associated companies, through most of 
its range one may see an occasional bird even in midwinter. 
927 Brummel St., Evanston, Illinois 60202 
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How the Passenger Pigeon Became Extinct 
By John Rybickt 
In the history of the conservation movement of the United States, probably 
nothing better symbolizes the ability of man to destroy wildlife on a large 
scale than the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. Early in the 19th century 
there were no less than 3 to 5 billions of these birds; about the end of the 
year 1900, the last wild Passenger Pigeon had disappeared. 
Descriptions of the great movements of these birds early in the 19th 
century are almost beyond belief. Both Alexander Wilson and John James 
Audubon reported seeing flocks of over one billion birds. Audubon saw a 
huge flock in 1813 while riding between Hardensburg and Louisville, Ky. 
During the 55-mile trip, the air was so full of pigeons that “the light of 
noonday was obscured as by an eclipse.’ This continued for three days. 
The atmosphere became strongly impregnated with the odor of the birds. 
Men and boys crowded the banks of the Ohio River, shooting at the birds 
as they passed low over the water, providing meat for the entire popula- 
tion for a week or more. 
Audubon estimated that the mile-wide flock, passing overhead for 
three hours, traveling at a rate of a mile a minute, with two pigeons per 
square yard, contained one billion, one hundred fifty million, one hundred 
thirty six thousand passenger pigeons. This was only a small part of the 
three-day flight! How, then, did this species become extinct? 
The Passenger Pigeon was a 16 to 17-inch long dove. Its tail was long, 
about half the length of its body. The neck and head were rather small. 
