Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/357

Rh that in some parts of the country they have learned the trick of flattening themselves as traps on top of ant hills with extended tongue which the ants seize upon as something eatable and are drawn in and devoured by the dozen.

Now, it would hardly be safe for a woodpecker of almost any other species with black-and-white plumage to follow any such accupationoccupation [sic], but the flicker when at rest only shows a subdued brown banded with black, tiger fashion, in a way that might possibly suggest the shadows of grass stems on dry turf or the fallen branch of a tree, the general effect being not unlike that of the plumage of the meadow lark in a similar position. Many of the concealed feathers, however, exhibit the brilliant black-and-white pattern characteristic of the tribe, and when the bird takes flight, as if aware that concealment was no longer possible, he flashes out the full glory of his wings and tail, that, together with the patch of white on his back, hidden until now by his folded wings, make him conspicuous as long as he is in sight. The scarlet of his crest, although bright enough, would hardly attract attention at any distance.

Now, in Kansas and westward the flickers have wings and tail lined with red instead of yellow, and where the two species come together it is said to be not uncommon to find specimens with one wing lined with red and the other with gold, and the tail feathers divided in a corresponding manner.

The green woodpecker of England, as might be expected in a climate where the leaves and grass are not burned brown at midsummer, wears Lincoln green like the foresters of old, who probably



knew him well and respected him as a bird that, like themselves, refused to live in confinement, and was only contented when in the greenwood.

Like the flicker, it has received a dozen or twenty common names by which it is known among the country folk, and among them highhole, yaffle, and woodwall at least are common to both this bird and our own species, which appears to have been confounded with the other by the early settlers. Woodwall I have never known to be applied to our bird outside of a certain limited district in southern