It has an excessively long, slender muzzle, and a worm-like, extensile tongue.

Three thousand of them, for a single meal, he has been known to lick out of a hill with his long, round, extensile, sticky tongue.

Bill shorter than the head, straight, conical; tongue long and extensile; nostrils without bristles, partly closed by a membrane; wings with the second primary somewhat the longest; tail-feathers soft and flexible.

The object of this extensile head is seen when one finds the larvae feeding upon the fruits or the seed-pods of its various food plants—hawthorn, hop, hound's-tongue, and St. John's-wort.

The only other North American birds that have a tongue built upon this plan are the hummingbirds, in which also it is extensile.