152 BULLETIN 174, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Tlie gourd-shaped excavation varies in depth from 6 to 10 inches, and it 

 is from 3 inches near the top to 4 or 5 inches wide at the bottom. The finer 

 chips are allowed to remain in the bottom, forming the nest proper, on which 

 the eggs are deposited. Frequently they are more than half covered by these 

 chips. The interior of the entire excavation is most carefully smoothed off, 

 which must consume considerable time, considering the tough, stringy, and 

 elastic nature of the wood when filled with sap, making it even more difficult 

 to work when partly decayed, which seems to be the case with nearly all the 

 aspens of any size. Probably eight or ten days are consumed in excavating a 

 satisfactory nesting site. All the larger and coarser chips are dropped out of 

 the hole and scattered about the base of the tree. 



Johnson A. Neff (1928) says: "The nests of these birds are placed 

 in whatever trees are abundant in their vicinity. In KLamath 

 County, in the foothills and in the lower valleys, alders, cottonwoods 

 and aspens were utilized; in the higher altitudes, firs were the com- 

 mon site, with the alder and w^illow along the small streams. In 

 the Willamette Valley the firs, cottonwoods, willows, alders, and 

 others, are used indiscriminately." 



Near Blaine, Wash., Mr. Dawson (Dawson and Bowles, 1909) found 

 an almost inaccessible nest of this sapsucker 50 feet from the ground 

 in a big fir stub, "sixteen feet around at the base, above the root 

 bulge, and perfectly desolate of limbs." He managed to reach the 

 nest with the help of a rope and cleats nailed on the barkless trunk. 

 He says : 



"By the time I had a hole large enough to thrust in the hand, the 

 eggs were quite buried in chips and rotten wood. But when they were 

 uncovered, they were seen to lie, seven of them, in two regular lines, 

 four in the front rank with sides touching evenly, and three in the 

 rear with points dove-tailed between." 



Harry S. Swarth (1924) also found some lofty nests in the Skeena 

 River region of northern British Columbia ; he writes : "During May 

 and June a number of nests were found, mostly through seeing the 

 old birds carrying food to the young. One was drilled in a live pop- 

 lar, the tree a straight column with no branching limb save at the 

 very top, the nest some seventy feet from the ground. Another was 

 in a dead birch, sixty feet up. Many others were noted, all in birch 

 or poplar, mostly dead trees, and no nest was less than fifty feet above 

 the ground. One male bird collected had the abdomen bare of 

 feathers. It obviously had been incubating eggs." 



Eggs. — The red-breasted sapsucker lays four to seven eggs, usually 

 five or six. Bendire (1895) describes them, as follows: "The eggs, 

 when fresh and before blowing, like those of all Woodpeckers, show 

 the yolk through the translucent shell, giving them a beautiful pink- 

 ish appearance, as well as a series of straight lines or streaks, of a 

 more pronounced white than the rest of the shell, running toward and 

 converging at the smaller axis of the egg. After blowing, the pink 



