ARCTIC THREE-TOED WOODPECKER 109 



Macoun (1909) reports, on the authority of Spreadborough, that 

 "a pair nested in a telegraph pole quite near Cache lake station of 

 the Parry Sound railway." Major Bendire (1895) writes: 



On May 10, 1883, while en route from Fort Klamath to Linkville, Oregon, and 

 only a few miles from the latter place, just where the pine timber ended and 

 the sagebrush commenced, I found a male busily at work on a pine stump, only 

 about 2% feet high and about 18 inches in diameter, standing within a few feet 

 of the road, and close to a charcoal burner's camp, in quite an open and exposed 

 situation, nearly all the timber in the vicinity having been cut down. The stump 

 was solid, full of pitch, and showed no signs of decay; the entrance hole was 

 about lYz inches in diameter and 8 inches from the top. The cavity, when first 

 examined, was only about 2 inches deep, and on my return, two days later, it 

 had reached a depth of 4 inches ; the female was then at work. To make sure 

 of a full set of eggs, I waited until the 2oth. The cavity then was found to be 

 18 inches deep, and was gradually enlarged toward the bottom. The four eggs 

 it contained had been incubated about four days. The female was on the nest, 

 and uttered a hissing sound as she left it, and might easily have been caught, as 

 she remained In the hole until the stump was struck with a hatchet. The sides 

 of the cavity were quite smooth, and the eggs were partly embedded in a slight 

 layer of pine chips. The locality where this nest was found was near the top of 

 a low divide, not over 4,100 feet in altitude. 



Dr. Thomas S. Roberts (1932) calls attention to an interesting 

 feature in the nesting habits of this woodpecker, as observed in two 

 nestings that he saw in Minnesota; he says of the two nests: 



The nesting-hole was in a live jack-pine on the edge of a tamarack and 

 spruce swamp, only twenty feet from a traveled road and close by a log 

 house used as a store. The entrance faced south and was twelve feet from 

 the ground, at which point the tree was seven inches in diameter. The outer 

 bark of the tree had been chipped off for a distance of twelve to fifteen inches 

 above and below the hole and half-way around the tree, thus leaving a large, 

 irregular, whitish area. * * * 



Another nest, found the same season, was also in a live evergreen tree and 

 the outer bark had been similarly stripped from around the entrance, making 

 a conspicuous, white patch with the dark nesting-hole in the center. Can this 

 be a direction mark for the returning bird among the dark tree trunks around? 



As to the height from the ground, P. B. Philipp writes to me that 

 of 26 nesting holes examined by him in New Brunswick two were 

 15 feet, two 12 feet, three 10 feet, one 8 feet, two 6 feet, two 5 feet, 

 four 4 feet, six 3 feet, and four only 2 feet above ground. 



Although the Arctic three-toed woodpecker usually nests at no great 

 height above ground, there are a few exceptions to this rule, mainly 

 in the western portion of its range. Grinnell and Storer (1924) record 

 a nest seen in the Yosemite region that was 50 feet above ground in 

 a dead lodgepole pine. Harry S. Swarth (1924) found, in the Skeena 

 River region, the highest nest of which I can find any record; he says : 

 "A nest of the Arctic three-toed woodpecker was found in Kispiox 

 Valley. It was placed in a dead and charred Engelmann spruce, in a 

 strip of spruce woods bordering a muskeg otherwise surrounded by 



