Читать книгу Bird Portraits - Эрнест Сетон-Томпсон, Seton Ernest Thompson - Страница 3

The Flicker is most beloved in March, when his hearty shout is one of the characteristic sounds of the first warm days of early spring. The same week which brings the Bluebird and the Blackbird hears the cheerful song of the Song Sparrow and the loud call of the Flicker.

Though a woodpecker, the Flicker has departed somewhat from the habits of its relatives, spending considerable time on the ground, and depending largely for its food on berries and ants. It is often startled from lawns and hillsides, where it has been thrusting its long tongue into colonies of black ants, seizing them on the moist, brushy tip. When so engaged, the bird may sometimes be closely approached, and a sight of its plumage is then a revelation to one who has seen from a distance only its dark brown body and white rump. The ashy gray nape sets off a bright red patch; there is a handsome black crescent across the breast, and the male wears black mustaches. The breast is handsomely spotted, and the quills and undersides of the wing and tail feathers are golden yellow. Unless one can steal up close to a bird, few of these marks show; but the Flicker may always be distinguished by his size (he is the largest of our common birds except the Crow), by the white rump, and the gleam of yellow which has given him the name Golden-winged Woodpecker. The flight, too, like that of all the woodpeckers, is characteristic; the wing strokes are slow, and between them the bird drops a little, so that its progress is in waves instead of in a straight line.

All the woodpeckers nest in holes, which they chisel out of decayed or even live wood. A circular entrance leads to a vertical passage, and this to a wide chamber some distance below. No lining of moss or feathers is put in; the pure white, nearly round eggs are laid directly on the chips at the bottom of the cavity, and the young birds after a few days hang by their claws to the side of the hole. Young Flickers, like young Humming-birds, are fed by their parents with a liquid food, which is pumped into their wide-opened mouths, the parent's bill being thrust far into the young one's.

The Flicker is one of the few birds that frequently return to the old nest. Most birds, contrary to the common notion, instead of refurnishing the weather-beaten and insecure structure into which their last year's home has been converted by snow, rain, and wind, prefer to build a new one. The material is everywhere at hand, and time is not so precious before the young are hatched. The Flicker, however, having built in a stout limb, can safely return for several seasons to the same cavity, or, if this becomes insecure, can cut another in the same trunk. Branches are often seen where three or four round openings show the tenements of several generations of these noisy birds. South of Massachusetts, Flickers generally spend the whole year in one spot, and in winter live largely on berries; a favorite food at this season is the berry of the poison ivy. In the fall, the rum cherry becomes a resort for all fruit-loving species.

The Flicker, though not known to raise a second brood, has a second period of song, so that we hear again in June the shout, or mating call, of the early spring days. Besides this high-pitched wick, wick, wick, the Flicker utters, when startled, a curious note like worroo; a sharp ti'ou is the call to its kind, and the syllables yucker, yucker, often accompanied by ludicrous bowing with wings and tail outspread, are used to show affection.