hissing sound, begins very soon after they are hatched.
At first exceedingly faint it soon grows stronger, and is
uttered day and night for two weeks. A parent upon taking
its place to brood these wailing nestlings begins to croon
a lullaby and continues this musical murmur until it falls
asleep, which is often quite soon. It has no effect in
lessening the noise of the youngsters, yet the parent
faithfully renders its cradle song until the young cease
to make this noise which is about the time they begin to
show fear. Of other cries that they make, there is the
chuckling noise uttered when the little one is in the act
of seizing the food-bearing bill, and there is a cry that
sounds like a whine. Still another one is a note of alarm
given when the young are disturbed by some such thing as
the opening of the trap door. This uttered in unison has a
very theatrical effect strongly suggesting the chorus of
the stage. After they have commenced to move about freely
in the nest they make much of the time a pleasant sound
like a chatter or quack, as if talking to each other. And
lastly comes the grown-up Flicker “pe-ap”, which they begin
to call as soon as they climb to the hole. * * *
Some broods are much more quarrelsome than others. Their
battle ground is in the vicinity of the hole. The one in
possession of the hole maintains his supremacy there by
occasional withdrawals of his head from the hole in order
to deliver vigorous blows on the heads of all within his
reach. This is the case with the stronger ones, the weaker
ones frequently are driven from the vantage place. When
the hole is large enough for two to thrust out their heads
together, they draw within after the serving of a meal and
fight furiously, while a waiting third may slip up and gain
the coveted hole. But all their fighting days seem to be
confined to a few in the fourth week of their lives.
* * * In very early life a meal is served to baby Flicker
with many insertions of the parent’s bill, as many as
thirty-four have been counted, but from eight to twenty are
the ordinary number, decreasing to three or four before the
young leave the nest. A record made during a continuous
watch of six hours and thirty-two minutes shows that each
parent fed five times; that the father delivered his supply
with eighty-two insertions of the bill, while the mother
used but forty-one. Probably the father brought more food
since on every count he proved himself the more devoted
parent. In grasping the bill the point of the youngster’s
bill is at right angles with that of the parent’s, thus
the opening between the food-bearing mandibles is covered
after the young have attained a few days of age, and
any over-dropping of food is prevented. This accident
frequently happens in the early days of the nest, then the
mussed up ants that fall are carefully picked up by the
frugal parent when the feeding is over. * * *
Experiments show that to a nestling weighing 743 grains was
given a breakfast that weighed 76 grains, to one weighing
1,430 grains a dinner of 118 grains, and to another that
tipped the scales at 1,530 grains a supper of 103 grains.
Probably the weight of the average load is not far from one
hundred grains. * * *
When the young were eighteen days old during a watch of
four and one-half hours twenty-five meals were given to
five nestlings that wore distinguished marks. Three of
these are positively known to have received five meals
apiece, and two received four apiece. * * * At this age the
young Flickers every hour partake of food to the amount of
one-sixteenth of their own weight, or in one day consume
their full weight of food.
She says that flickers are very solicitous to keep a clean nest; for
the first nine or ten days the parents eat the excrements, but after
that the dejecta are carried out in the tough white sacks in which they
are enclosed. If no sacks of excrement are found in the nest after
feeding, the parent solicits them; “this is done by biting the heel
joints sometimes, but more often the fleshy protuberance that bears
that budding promise of the tail.”
She says that the male “staid with the young every night until they
were three weeks old, brooding all of them until nearly two weeks of
age, when they began pressing their breasts against the side of the
nest, and he could cover the tails of two or three only, after which
for two or three nights he sat upon the bottom of the nest apart from
the young; then for four nights he hung upon the wall of the nest near
the hole; thereafter he staid with them no more.”
Her records show that the young remained in the nest nearly or quite
four weeks, or from 25 to 28 days. During the last three or four days
nearly all of them lost weight; this may have been due to the period
of the heaviest feather growth, or because the parents may have let up
on the feeding to induce the young to leave the nest. Miss Sherman’s
statements, as to the period of incubation and the length of time that
the young remain in the nest, are quite at variance with statements
made by others, but her observations were so carefully and thoroughly
made under such favorable circumstances that they are more convincing
than less accurate observations of others.
Some others have also described the method of feeding the young by
regurgitation in a manner that differs from that observed by Miss
Sherman. Mr. Brewster (1936), for example, says:
Standing on the edge of the hole, the parent would select
one--usually the nearest, I thought--and bending down would
drive his bill to its base into the gaping mouth which
instantly closed tightly around it, when the head and bill
of the parent was worked up and down with great rapidity
for from one to one and one-half seconds (timed with a
stop watch), the young meanwhile holding on desperately
and apparently never once losing its grasp, although its
poor little head was jerked up and down violently. The
first, or entering downward thrust of the parent’s bill
looked like a vicious stab, the bird apparently striking
with all its force and as if with the design of piercing
his offspring to the vitals. The subsequent up and down
motion was invariably rapid and regular and resembled the
bill movement of a woodpecker while “drumming.” It also
suggested the stroke of a piston.
In this case the top of the stump had been broken off, leaving the
nest open and exposed, so that every motion could be clearly seen from
a distance of not over 15 feet. After the young had left the nest, he
discovered that “the nest was left in a terribly foul state, the bottom
being a disgusting mass of muddy excrement alive with wriggling worms.
* * * These young, however, managed to keep very clean and all, so far
as I could discover, were perfectly free from vermin.” Apparently the
old birds find it difficult to clean the nest after the young reach a
certain size.
W. I. Lyon (1922) tells an interesting story of a screech owl that
adopted and brooded a family of young flickers, after its own nest in
the same tree had been broken up twice; the owl even brought in part of
a small bird, perhaps intending to feed it to the young flickers, which
were all the time being fed by their parents and were successfully
raised.
_Plumages._--Miss Sherman (1910) gives a very good description of the
naked and blind nestling, as follows: “The pellucid color of the newly
hatched Flicker resembles that of freshly sun-burned human skin, but
so translucent is the nestling’s skin that immediately after a feeding
one can see the line of ants that stretches down the bird’s throat and
remains in view two or three minutes before passing onward. This may be
witnessed for several days while the skin assumes a coarser red, until
it begins to thicken and become a bluish hue, before the appearance of
the pin-feathers. These may be detected under the skin on the fifth day
at the same time that bristle-like projections about one-sixteenth of
an inch long announce the coming of the rectrices and remiges.”
Mr. Burns (1900) says: “It is not known when the white membranous
process which extends from either side of the base of the lower
mandible disappears, but it probably goes at a very early age. This
formation is apparently peculiar to all young woodpeckers, as suggested
by Frank A. Bates, in the _Ornithologist and Oologist_, Vol. XVI, p.
35, but its use is unknown.” A photograph, published by E. H. Forbush
(1927), shows that this does not wholly disappear until the young
bird is nearly fledged; its function is probably to help guide the
regurgitated food from the mouth of the adult into the throat of the
young bird during the feeding method noted by Miss Sherman (1910).
The young flicker is fully fledged in its juvenal plumage when it
leaves the nest; and, contrary to the rule among birds, this plumage
more nearly resembles the plumage of the adult male than that of the
old female, as the young of both sexes have the black malar patches.
The black bands on the upper parts are much broader, the vinaceous
portions of the head and neck are more tinged with gray, the malar
patches are duller black, and the lower parts are paler with duller and
larger black spots than in the adult. The crown is usually more or less
suffused with dull red, especially in young males, and sometimes the
red nuchal crescent is somewhat wider or more extensive; the crescent
on the breast is usually smaller; the yellow on the under sides of
the wings and tail is duller and more greenish; the black tips in the
tail are duller and not so sharply defined against the yellow; and the
upper tail coverts are black with white spots, instead of being white
and boldly barred with black, as in the adult. The plumage is soft and
loose in texture and the bill is small and weak.
This plumage is worn but a short time, as a complete molt begins in
July and is usually finished in September or October, producing a
first winter plumage that is practically adult. Adults have a complete
postnuptial molt at about the same time of year. A detailed account
of the progress of the molt of young birds is given by William Palmer
(1901) and one of the adults by Burns (1900); both accounts are too
long to be quoted here. Fall adults in fresh plumage are very handsome
birds, more deeply and richly colored than spring birds; the upper
parts are deeper brown and the lower parts are suffused with yellowish
buff; wear and fading produce a more contrasted plumage in the spring
in which the dark markings are less obscured and the soft suffusion has
disappeared.
The interesting and extensive hybridizing with the red-shafted flicker
will be discussed under the latter species.
_Food._--The flicker is more terrestrial in its feeding habits than
any of our other woodpeckers. It is a common sight to see one of them
hopping about on a lawn, or in an open place in the woods and fields,
probing in the ground for ants or picking up ground insects or fallen
berries. It is one of our most useful birds, worthy of the fullest
protection. Professor Beal (1911) has shown that 60.92 percent of its
food consists of animal matter and 39.08 percent of vegetable matter.
About 75 percent of the animal food, or 45 percent of the entire food,
consists of ants. The flicker eats more ants than any other bird;
ants were found in 524 of the 684 stomachs examined, and 98 stomachs
contained no other food; one stomach contained over 5,000 ants, and
two others held over 3,000 each. If it had no other beneficial habit,
the flicker would deserve protection for the good it does in keeping
in check these injurious and annoying insects. Ants protect plant lice
of various species, which may become very injurious to many kinds of
cultivated plants, inflicting serious losses for the agricultural
interests; the plant lice, or aphids, secrete a sweet honey-dew juice,
of which the ants are very fond; consequently these tiny insects are
herded by the ants and milked like cows. The ants take good care of
their honey-producing “cattle,” driving them away from ladybugs and
other enemies, leading them to new pastures, if the old ones dry up,
sheltering the aphid eggs in their nests, and carrying the young aphids
out onto the plants to feed. Mr. Forbush (1927) also says: “Ants riddle
posts set in the ground or any timber or lumber resting upon or in
contact with the ground. They destroy the sills of buildings set close
to the ground and often ruin living trees, especially such as have a
few dead roots. They infest lawns and buildings, destroying grass on
the lawns and food in the house, and are difficult to eradicate. They
sometimes eat alive the young of certain ground-nesting birds. They are
very prolific and require a severe check on their numbers. Otherwise
they would become unbearable pests.”
The flicker explores the ground, often scratching away leaves or
rubbish, to locate the ant nests, digs into the nest with its long
bill, and, as the ants come pouring out, it laps them up in quantities
or inserts its long, sticky tongue deep down into the nest to get the
young and eggs. Early in spring it digs into the large mounds of the
mound-building ants, while the ants are less active, or tears open some
rotten stump to uncover a nest. Only a few days ago, I dug into an old
apple-tree stump for some rotten wood to put on some of my wildflowers
and uncovered a large nest of ants; within a very few minutes my pair
of flickers were on the job cleaning up the ants and their pupae.
Other insect food of the flicker includes a variety of beetles,
wasps, grasshoppers, crickets, mole crickets, chinch bugs, wood lice,
caterpillars, grubs, and various flying insects, which it sometimes
catches on the wing, darting after them like a flycatcher (Burns, 1900).
According to Beal (1911), 39.08 percent of its food is vegetable
matter. Most of this consists of wild fruits and berries, such
as the berries of the dogwood (_Cornus_) and Virginia creeper,
hackberries, blueberries, huckleberries, pokeberries, serviceberries
(_Amelanchier_), elderberries, barberries, mulberries, blackberries,
wild grapes, wild black cherries, choke cherries, cultivated cherries,
and the berries of the black alder, sour gum, black gum, greenbrier
(_Smilax_), spicebush (_Benzoin_), red cedar, hawthorn, mountain
ash, and woodbine. Harold H. Bailey (1913) says that while the fall
migration is at its height in Virginia, about October first, “they are
particularly fond of the blue berry of the black-gum tree, and after
once finding a tree with fruit, will continue to come to it until every
berry is gone, even though continually shot at. I remember a case a few
years back, when a local gunner killed fifty-seven flickers from one
black-gum tree in one forenoon. After the gumberries are gone, they
take to the dogwood berry for their main article of food, a fine red
berry and always plentiful in Tidewater.”
The flicker feeds freely on the seeds of the poison ivy and poison
sumac and perhaps does some harm in distributing the seeds of these
noxious plants. Professor Beal (1895) also includes the seeds of
other sumacs, clover, grasses, pigweed, mullein, ragweed, and other
unidentified seeds, and the seeds of the magnolia and knotweed. Mr.
Burns (1900) adds wild strawberries, dewberries, raspberries, and wild
plums, also acorns, beechnuts, corn from shocks, and oats, wheat, and
rye from stacks.
The birds that Miss Sherman (1910) watched in their nesting box
ate considerable sawdust. “That at one time the male ate three
tablespoonfuls is deemed a modest estimate. An attempt to measure the
amount both ate by a fresh supply daily showed the consumption of three
or more handfuls. The sawdust came from sugar maple, white and red oak
wood.” She seemed to think that flickers have “little use for water,”
having seen them drink only twice, during many hours of watching from
a blind, “all of which taken together would amount to weeks.” Owen
Durfee speaks in his notes of having seen three flickers drinking, or
eating, snow on a cold day in winter; he saw one drop down onto a patch
of snow on a stone wall and begin eating the snow. “His motions were
just like a chicken drinking water--the partly closed bill was dipped
into the snow and then held up in the air and the mandibles worked as
though chewing or dissolving it, when another dip would be made. Soon
two other flickers flew down in the same manner and secured some snow
water. On approaching, I found the footprints and several little round
holes somewhat smaller than a pencil.”
I have often seen them drinking water and so have other observers;
perhaps they drink copiously but not often.
Francis H. Allen says in his notes: “I have seen one feeding in the
manner of a chickadee among the twigs of a tree, perching crosswise of
the twig and flitting about actively, gleaning some minute food. Mr.
Brewster told me that he had seen a flicker feeding this way.”
Joseph J. Hickey tells me that he has seen a flicker feeding after the
manner of an Arctic three-toed woodpecker, deliberately scaling off the
bark in search for food; this bird had denuded about half the bark of a
hemlock.
_Behavior._--In ordinary short flights, the flicker proclaims its
relationship to the other woodpeckers by its rhythmic bounding flight,
the wings beating more rapidly on the rises and much less so on the
dips, which are usually followed by a short sail on motionless wings.
Mr. Burns (1900) noted that the dips occur about every 15 or 20 feet
and that the bird drops about 3 feet on each dip. On more prolonged
flights the flight is steadier, more direct, strong, and fairly swift.
It does not ordinarily fly at any great height, except when migrating.
When alighting on a tree trunk, there is a graceful upward glide,
the trunk is grasped with the feet, and the tail is used as a prop in
true woodpecker fashion; but the flicker is more apt to alight on a
horizontal branch than other woodpeckers, when there is less upward
glide and an upright posture is assumed, as balance is acquired.
On the ground, the flicker proceeds slowly by short hops, but sometimes
it runs rapidly for a few steps and then stops; it seems content to
confine its foraging to a rather limited area and does not appear very
active.
Spring drumming on a resonant limb, or inside a nesting cavity, is
an essential part of the call to courtship or mating, and perhaps a
signal call for other purposes; but it is used at other times, perhaps
for sheer amusement. This habit sometimes becomes a nuisance, since
the bird has discovered that the tin roof of a house serves as the
best kind of a drum; here he comes morning after morning while we are
enjoying our slumbers, from which we are rudely awakened at an unseemly
hour. Mr. DuBois writes to me that, on an afternoon in June, “a flicker
was drumming on the lid of a large galvanized iron ash or garbage can
at the corner of the back porch of a residence; he stood on the top of
the lid and, at intervals, after looking around, he beat an extremely
rapid roll on this metallic drum; the effect was startling.”
As to the roosting habits of flickers, Miss Sherman (1910) writes:
“Of all our birds the flickers are the earliest to retire at night,
sometimes going to their lodgings an hour before sundown, the customary
time being about a half hour before sunset. Generally they go out soon
after sunrise, but on cool autumn mornings they have been known to
linger much longer. During a rainstorm in the middle of the day they
have been seen to seek their apartments, also in fine weather they have
been found there enjoying the seclusion thus afforded.”
Frank R. Smith, of Hyattsville, Md., sends me the following note, dated
February 28, 1936: “For some nights, a flicker has been roosting in the
shell of a dead tree, from which one side has decayed away, leaving a
troughlike section of its trunk standing. He roosts about 12 feet from
the ground. This morning it was cloudy and he left the roosting place
at 7:25, although official sunrise is at 6:37.” Mr. Shelley tells me
that he flushed a male from the nest tree, “where he clung each night
about 3 feet above the nest hole, with the female brooding the young
within.” Flickers will roost in any open cavity in a tree, or even in a
partially sheltered spot on the open trunk; they often drill holes in
barns or under the eaves of houses for winter roosts; a favorite winter
roosting place is in the sawdust between the double walls of icehouses.
Sometimes they dig a hole into a vacant building and fail to find their
way out; I once found one dead inside the garage at my summer cottage,
which had been closed all winter. Mr. Forbush (1927) says that “during
one winter at Wareham one apparently slept on the wall of my summer
cottage under the eaves, clinging to one of the ornamental battens in
an upright position as it would cling to a tree trunk. This bird for
some unaccountable reason chose the north side of the cottage. He was
there night after night at dusk and also at daylight each morning.
Mr. K. F. Carr tells of a flicker that was accustomed to pass winter
nights in a chimney of an unoccupied dwelling in a thickly settled
neighborhood which undoubtedly was a more comfortable roosting place
than the north side of my cottage.”
Dr. Lynds Jones told Mr. Burns (1900) that “at Oberlin College a single
bird roosted between the vertical water pipe and wall of Spear Library
for two successive winters, and another occupied the cupola of the
Theological Seminary the succeeding winter.”
Flickers are generally regarded as peaceful harmless birds, but the
following two quotations indicate that they are sometimes otherwise.
O. P. Allert (1934) writes from Giard, Iowa: “On June 4, 1933, while in
the yard of my home, I was attracted by the cries of a pair of Robins
and saw a female Flicker in the act of killing the two young that the
Robins’ nest contained. One was killed in the nest, and the other
either fell or was thrown to the ground, where the Flicker followed and
dispatched it.”
Dr. Dayton Stoner (1932) writes: “While the flicker is not habitually
belligerent, it does on occasion show some aggressiveness. This most
frequently occurs during the breeding season. For example, on July
11, 1929, in the Parker woods south of Lakeport, I came upon several
flickers and two or three crows that were tormenting a red-shouldered
hawk. The flickers were pecking excitedly on the limbs of the tree on
which the hawk perched, and clamoring loudly at it. When the hawk flew
off the flickers darted after it, pecking it unmercifully until it lit
again, when they were cautious about approaching close to the harassed
hawk. This quarrel was continued for more than half an hour.”
_Voice._--The flicker has an elaborate vocabulary; no other woodpecker,
and few other birds, can produce a greater variety of loud striking
calls and soft conversational notes. A number of its many vernacular
names are based on a fancied resemblance to some one of its notes, and
in most cases these names give a very fair idea of the note. A few of
such names are “flicker,” “yucker,” “wacup,” “hit-tock,” “yarrup,”
“clape,” and “piute”; and there are other modifications of these in
different combinations of letters.
The commonest and most characteristic note is the loud spring call, of
which Eugene P. Bicknell (1885) says: “Its long rolling call may be
taken as especially representative of song, and is a characteristic
sound of the empty woodland of early spring. It is usually given from
some high perch, and has a free, far-reaching quality, that gives it
the effect of a signal thrown out over the barren country, as if to
arouse sleeping nature. This call continues irregularly through the
summer, but then loses much of its prominence amid the multitude of
bird voices. It is not infrequent in September, but later than the
middle of October I have not heard it.”
This is a sharp, penetrating note, which can be heard at a long
distance; the syllables _wick, wick, wick, wick_, or _yuck, yuck,
yuck, yuck_, are very rapidly uttered and repeated in long series.
Dr. Elon H. Eaton (1914) says that “it may be heard for more than
half a mile and has been variously syllabized, usually written as
‘_cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh_’,” which hardly represents my idea of the song.