FLICKER

"The Flicker's beak is more slender and curving than those of his
brethren, and he has an extremely long, barbed tongue, which, he uses to
probe ant-hills. The sticky substance in the bird's mouth covers the
little barbs on its tongue, and thus he is able to catch a great many
ants at a time. He is one of our best ant-eaters."

"Are ants very bad things if they don't get into the sugar?" asked Dodo.

"There are a great many kinds of ants; though all may not be harmful,
some of them do great damage by destroying timber or ripe fruit, and
helping to spread lice about the roots of all sorts of plants.

"The Flicker has a jolly laughing call that sounds like
'Wick-wick-wick-wick!' repeated very quickly, and he also hammers away
on a tree in fine style when he wishes to call his mate or let her know
his whereabouts. Like other Woodpeckers, he hollows out a soft spot in a
tree until he has made quite a deep hole, which, with a few chips in the
bottom for bedding, serves as his nest. Most little Woodpeckers climb up
to the hole-edge to be fed; but young Flickers are fed in the same way
as little Hummingbirds, the parent swallowing food and when it is
softened bringing it back from the crop by pressing on it with the
beak."

"What is the crop?" asked Dodo.

"It is an elastic pouch in the gullet of a bird, where food that has
been swallowed is kept for a while before it goes further down into the
stomach. You have seen this crop in the necks of Chickens and Pigeons."
"Oh, yes, a round swelled-up place; but what is the good of it?"
persisted Dodo.

"It is a resting-place for food, where it may swell, soften, and be
partly ground up. All birds are fond of eating sand and gravel."

"Oh, yes! My Canary picks up lots of little bits every time I put fresh
sand in his cage."

"This gravel mixes with the food and helps to grind it up. You ran
understand how necessary this is when you remember that some birds, like
Pigeons, swallow hard grains of corn entirely whole."

"Yes, and I saw Mammy Bun clean a Chicken yesterday," said Nat; "there
was a lot of sand and corn in a lump in its throat--and so that's called
a crop?"

[Illustration: Flicker.]

"To return to the Flickers: they live in flocks in autumn, and when a
number are feeding on the ground at a little distance they might be
taken for Meadowlarks--so you see that you did not make such a dreadful
mistake after all, little girl."

"Won't you come over to the