After fourteen days young birds are hatched, blind, ugly, helpless. In a few days more, however, they are able to cling to the sides of the nesting hollow, and are ready to set up a clamor upon the appearance of food. This noise has been compared to the hissing of a nest of snakes, but as the fledglings grow it becomes an uproar equal to the best efforts of a telephone pole on a frosty morning.
The young are fed entirely by regurgitation, not an attractive process, but one admirably suited to the necessities of long foraging expeditions and varying fare. When able to leave the nest the fledglings usually clamber about the parental roof-tree for a day or two before taking flight. Their first efforts at obtaining food for themselves are usually made upon the ground, where ants are abundant. These with grasshoppers and other ground-haunting insects make up a large percentage of food, both of the young and adults. It will appear from this that the Red-shafted Flicker is not only harmless but decidedly beneficial—save in the matter of hostility to school boards, above mentioned.
No. 179.
NORTHWESTERN FLICKER.
A. O. U. No. 413 a. Colaptes mexicanus saturatior Ridgway.
Description.—Like C. m. collaris but darker; ground color of upperparts burnt umber with a purplish tinge; ground color of underparts vinaceous buff to color of back; sides of head and throat deep smoke-gray; pileum cinnamomeous. Specimens in the Provincial Museum at Victoria indicate hybridization between this form and C. auratus luteus. Of twenty-seven males from Vancouver Island nine possess in whole or in part the scarlet nuchal patch characteristic of auratus. Length up to 14.00 (355.6); av. of five Glacier specimens: wing 6.55 (166.4): tail 5.13 (130.3); bill 1.55 (39.4).
Recognition Marks.—As in preceding; darker.
Nesting.—Nest: much as in preceding, but usually higher up. Eggs: usually 6, somewhat less glossy than those of C. m. collaris.
General Range.—Northwest coast from northern California to Sitka, hybridizing with C. a. luteus northerly.
Range in Washington.—Common resident west of Cascades, breeding from tide-water to timber-line, migrating irregularly to East-side in winter; probably some substitution of northern birds for local summer residents on Puget Sound in winter.
Authorities.—? Picus mexicanus, Audubon, Orn. Biog. V., 1839, 174, pl. 416. Colaptes mexicanus Swains, Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. IX., 1858, pp. 120, 121. C&S. Rh. Kb. Ra. Kk. B. E.
Specimens.—U. of W. P. Prov. B. BN. E.
Thoughtless people often call the Flickers of Washington “Yellow-hammers,” quite regardless of the fact that the western Flicker is no longer yellow, but orange-red. Such an oversight is unpardonable, but it would require a nice eye to distinguish out of hand this really deeply-tinted bird from its lighter brother, the Red-shafted, across the Cascades. The Cascade Mountains mark the ground of intergradation between mexicanus and saturatior, and it would seem probable that specimens taken in winter in eastern Washington and dubbed saturatior, are really birds which summer on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, and which approach the saturated type of plumage, rather than migrants from across the mountains, as has been assumed. These are mere subtleties. It is more important to note that birds of the mexicanus type do not appear to differ in song or in psychology from the familiar Colaptes auratus of the East. I therefore transcribe three paragraphs from “The Birds of Ohio” without apology, only substituting flame (i. e., orange-red) for “cloth of gold.”
Taken near Victoria. Photo by the Author.
THE OAK TREES OF CEDAR HILL.
A NESTING HAUNT OF THE NORTHWESTERN FLICKER.
It is perhaps as a musician that the Flicker is best known. The word musician is used in an accommodated sense, for the bird is no professional singer, or instrumental maestro; but so long as the great orchestra of Nature is rendering the oratorio of life, there will be place for the drummer, the screamer, and the utterer of strange sounds, as well as for the human obligato. The Flicker is first, like all other Woodpeckers, a drummer. The long rolling tattoo of early springtime is elicited from some dry limb or board where the greatest resonance may be secured, and it is intended both as a musical performance and as a call of inquiry. Once, as a student, the writer roomed in a large building, whose unused chimneys were covered with sheet-iron. A Flicker had learned the acoustic value of these elevated drums, and the sound of this bird’s reveille at 4:00 a. m. was a regular feature of life at “Council Hall.”
The most characteristic of the bird’s vocal efforts is a piercing call delivered from an elevated situation, clape or kly-ak, and cheer or kee-yer. The scythe-whetting song is used for greeting, coaxing or argumentation, and runs from a low wee-co, wee-co—thru wake-up, wake-up, wake-up—to an emphatic wy-kle, wy-kle, wy-kle, or, in another mood sounds like flicker, flicker, flicker.
