The Flicker is one of our best-known birds. Living in the towns, and conspicuous as it is with its golden wing and tail-linings, its white rump-patch, and easily imitated cries, it is familiar to all, and has won for itself many a nickname.
It is often seen hopping about on the lawn. Its ability in perching or in standing on the ground marks it as a creature of wide adaptation, yet on the tree-trunk it is a normal woodpecker, using its still tail-feathers as a prop.
Northern Flicker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
The Flicker is very fond of ants. Patiently it will sit on an ant-hill, probing its long, saliva-covered tongue down into the burrow, drawing the insects out and eating them by the dozen. It may remain thus at an ant-hill half an hour at a time, filling its gizzard and crop with the insects, whose bites and acid flavor seem not to be objectionable.
Flickers sometimes become annoying when they choose a tin roof or favorite spot on a gable as a drumming-point. At such a place they will roll out their challenge at sunrise on the spring mornings, wakening all the household. Occasionally they drill their nests in houses, under the eaves, and thereby may do considerable damage.
The courtship dance is animated and beautiful. With handsome wings flashing and tail widely spread, the birds bow to each other, calling rapidly wickah, wickah, wickah. Flickers are considerably persecuted by Starlings which oust them from their nests and use the cavities as their own.
WHIP-POOR-WILL
Setochalcis vocifera vocifera (Wilson)
Description.—Head and eyes large; bill very small; mouth lined with long, hair-like feathers which protrude in front of bill; feet small and weak; plumage soft and lax; color pattern highly protective. Head and upperparts rich deep brown and gray, streaked, mottled, and barred with black, buffy, and whitish; a noticeable white band across throat; tail with terminal half of three outer feathers white; no white spot in wings; underparts buffy, irregularly and finely barred and marked with blackish; eyes deep brown. The female differs only in having the throat-patch and tips of the outer tail-feathers buffy instead of white. Length: 10 inches.
Range in Pennsylvania.—A somewhat local summer resident from April 20 to September 30; found only in deep woodlands.
Nest.—None. Eggs: 2, white, spotted sparingly with grayish, lilac, and brownish, and laid on the leaves or ground, without even a depression.
