Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/356

340 taken to gathering a portion of their food on the ground appear to have adopted the more inconspicuous browns and greens for protection. The common golden-winged woodpecker is a case in point, a bird which I fancy occupies much the same place in this country that the green woodpecker does in England, though the latter is probably nowhere as abundant or familiar as our species. Both are



genuine enough woodpeckers, but without the conservative habits of the majority of their race. The typical woodpecker, large or small, spends the greater part of its time clinging to the bark of a tree, by preference a dead one, hitching himself along by short stages, usually ascending the tree by a spiral course in order to survey as much of its surface as possible, and whenever he suspects the presence of an insect beneath the bark his sharp bill enables him to dig through bark, sapwood, and everything, until his victim is finally cornered at the extremity of its hole, and is drawn forth impaled on the barbed point of the bird's tongue, or held fast by the sticky substance which covers it. And while so engaged the bird's black-and-white plumage is really not so conspicuous as might be expected, at a distance the colors appearing to blend in such a manner as to give the effect of dark gray or ash color, which matches admirably with the surface of the majority of tree trunks, especially in the shadow. But the flicker gets a comparatively small portion of its food in this manner. Sometimes, it is true, he may be seen pecking away busily enough on a prostrate log or decaying stump in the pastures, and he is said to render valuable assistance to the fruit growers by digging out the borers from the trunks of peach and plum trees at every opportunity, but he prefers the less laborious process of gathering his insect food from the surface of the ground like other birds, probably digging some of it from the turf with his bill. It is said