Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/359

Rh fact, at the approach of any one or anything, the youngsters taking it for granted that any sound that reaches them in their seclusion must necessarily mean food, and each endeavors to drown the clamor of all the others.

After a while the parents try to entice them out into the daylight by clinging to the branch and holding some delicate morsel before the entrance, whereupon the most enterprising, or possibly the hungriest, youngster scrambles up the wall of the nursery and, thrusting out his head, seizes the food and falls back aghast at his own boldness. They are apt to be slow about leaving the nest, and are generally fully fledged before they finally gather courage to crawl forth and cling to the branches, shrieking hysterically for their parents to come to their rescue. After a day or two of such behavior they grow braver, and learn to accompany their parents about the orchard, and at last away to the pastures, seldom showing themselves about the house after they have fairly learned to fly. Being a heavy-bodied bird, the flicker is only too often regarded as a game bird, though his flesh is, to say the least, tough, and here is where his intelligence becomes most apparent, for it certainly looks as though these birds learned to know at sight those persons who are in the way of shooting them, for they are almost invariably regarded by these gunners as about the most difficult birds to approach in existence, though others do not regard them in that light, and for my own part I certainly have hundreds of opportunities for shooting them every season if I were so inclined.

The downy woodpecker perhaps comes next to the flicker in abundance, for, although never to be seen in any great numbers, one or two of them may usually be found wherever there are decaying trees for them to work upon. Nor do they depend entirely upon dying trees for their nesting grounds, as one may frequently be seen working his way up the stem of a young fruit tree or sapling whose smooth bark would hardly be supposed capable of furnishing concealment for the smallest insect. Next to the apple tree, the elm is perhaps his favorite, the rough bark of large ones allowing