U.S. [Said to be echoic of the bird’s note.] The popular name of various American species of woodpecker.
1849. Thoreau, Week Concord Riv., Thursday, 333. The wildest scenes have an air of domesticity and homeliness even to the citizen, and when the flicker’s cackle is heard in the clearing, he is reminded that civilization has wrought but little change there.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind., 19. Seen so near and at rest, he [the flicker] makes good his claim to the title of pigeon-woodpecker.
1888. Riverside Nat. Hist., IV. Introd., 8. The two flickers are mainly characterized by the color of the under surface of the wing and tail feathers, these being red in the red-shafted (Colaptes mexicanus), gamboge yellow in the yellow-shafted flicker (C. auratus). Ibid., IV. 428. The Cape flicker (C. chrysoides), with red moustache.
