A search for a meadowlark’s nest is an exciting adventure that keeps one alert. It is usually found by accident, perhaps after the wary builder has ceased trying to deceive the searcher. A sight of the speckled eggs or young fledglings in their cozy home with a grass-arched doorway is not soon forgotten.
Unlike quail, baby meadowlarks are unable to run about as soon as they are out of the egg, but remain for two weeks in their cleverly camouflaged home, where they are often the prey of snakes and other enemies. Meadowlarks are now being widely protected, for many farmers regard them as one of their greatest assets.
FLICKER
THE NORTHERN FLICKER OR GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER
Woodpecker Family—Picidæ
Length: About 12 inches; one of our largest common birds.
General Appearance: A large brown bird with a red patch on the back of the head, conspicuous white rump and yellow lining of wings, which distinguish it from the brown meadowlark with its white tail-feathers.
Male: Top of head and neck gray; a crescent of red across nape; cheeks and throat pinkish-brown, separated by black patches; strong bill 1½ inches long; under parts pinkish-brown and white, heavily spotted with black; a black crescent separates throat and breast. Back and upper wing-feathers a grayish-brown, barred with black; large white patch at rump very conspicuous in flight; upper tail-coverts black and white; tail black above, yellow underneath.
Female: Like male, except for the absence of black patches at the sides of the throat.
Notes: A loud che-ack′; also a note which Mr. Frank M. Chapman says “can be closely imitated by the swishing of a willow-wand: weechew, weechew, weechew.”[70] Flickers drum frequently on boughs, also, and give a loud, rapid flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flicker,—which may be called, by courtesy, their song.
Habitat: Open woods, fields, orchards, and gardens, where trees or ant-hills are to be found.
Range: Northern and eastern North America. Breeds in the forested regions of Alaska and Canada; in the United States east of the Rockies and southward to the Gulf Coast and Texas in the winter. Resident in the U. S. except in the more northern parts.
The SOUTHERN FLICKER, a resident as far south as southern Florida and central Texas, is smaller and darker than the Northern Flicker.
The RED-SHAFTED FLICKER, a western species, has red cheek-patches instead of black, red wing and tail feathers, instead of yellow; it lacks the red band on the head. It is found in the Rocky Mt. and Pacific Coast regions from British Columbia to Mexico, and east to western Texas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. In regions where the northern flicker also is found, these two species have hybridized. In the National Museum of Washington there are numerous specimens of these hybrids, where the red and black cheek-patches, the red and yellow wing-feathers and red band on the head appear in various unusual combinations.
The Flicker is a bird of distinction. A glimpse of him at once arouses interest, curiosity, and a desire for further acquaintance. He is handsome, well set up, full of vitality and power—the personification of efficiency.
We like his cheerful voice—a trifle too loud for a gentleman of refinement, but a welcome sound in the season when the whole world wishes to shout with joy at the release from winter’s confinement. Thoreau wrote: “Ah, there is the note of the first flicker, a prolonged, monotonous wick-wick-wick-wick-wick-wick, etc., or, if you please, quick, quick, quick, heard far over and through the dry leaves. But how that single sound peoples and enriches all the woods and fields. They are no longer the same woods and fields that they were. This note really quickens what was dead. It seems to put life into the withered grass and leaves and bare twigs, and henceforth the days shall not be as they have been. It is as when a family, your neighbors, return to an empty house after a long absence, and you hear the cheerful hum of voices and the laughter of children.... So the flicker makes his voice ring.... It is as good as a house-warming to all nature.”[71]
We cannot repress a smile as we watch this golden-winged woodpecker striving to make a favorable impression upon Miss Flicker. He and a group of rivals take amusing, awkward attitudes, make a variety of noisy but pleasant calls, and without any ill-tempered quarreling, select their mates and “live happily ever after.”
Though a woodpecker, the flicker departs from family habits and traditions by seeking his livelihood on the ground in preference to tree-trunks. He is a foe to the industrious ant that we were taught to admire along with the “busy bee.” But ants destroy timber, infest houses, and cause the spread of aphids that are enemies of garden plants; therefore the ant’s destroyer, the flicker, is a neighborhood benefactor and deserves our heartfelt protection. Professor Beal reports finding 3,000 ants in the stomach of each of two flickers and fully 5,000 in that of another.[72] These insects form almost half of this bird’s food. His long, sticky tongue is especially adapted to their capture. He likes grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and caterpillars, and while he enjoys fruit, he takes little that is of any value to man.