Grackles, martins, flycatchers, and other smaller birds, recognizing them as marauders, will chase crows in the spring and summer. Watching the little feathered dive-bombers attack the lumbering crow is quite a show, the larger bird always retreating as best he can, sometimes losing a few feathers, but seldom his dignity.
Our smallest woodpecker at 6 inches; spotted with black and white. Dark bars on the outer tail feathers distinguish it from the similar but larger hairy woodpecker. Resident in the United States and the forested parts of Canada and Alaska.
This woodpecker is widely distributed, living in woodlands, orchards and gardens. Like the hairy woodpecker, it beats a tattoo on a dry resonant tree branch. To appreciative ears it has the quality of forest music. In a hole excavated in a dead branch the downy woodpecker lays four to six eggs. This and the hairy woodpecker are valuable human allies, their food consisting of some of the worst insect foes of orchard and shade trees. Beef suet, fastened too high for dogs to pirate, will attract Downies to a feeding station.
Length 13 inches; the yellow (salmon in western birds) under surfaces of the wing and tail, and white rump are characteristic. It breeds throughout the United States and in forested parts of Canada; winters in most of the southern United States.
The flicker inhabits open country and delights in parklike regions where trees are numerous but well-spaced. It is possible to insure the presence of this useful bird about the home and to increase its numbers. It nests in any large cavity in a tree and readily appropriates an artificial nesting box. The most terrestrial of our woodpeckers, it procures much of its food from the ground. The largest item of animal food is ants, of which it eats more than any other common bird. The flicker is more adapted to suburbs than to the larger cities.
The male is the only small, yellow bird with black wings and tail, with flight that is extremely undulating. In winter the species concentrate in areas where seed-laden plants are common.
They breed from Canada to Mexico and winter in the same range, nesting in July and August, after most birds have finished. The song is long-sustained, clear, light, and canary-like. In its flight, each dip is often punctuated by a simple cry of _ti-dee-di-di_.