196 BULLETIN 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



observations of otliers. Major Bendire (1895) makes the following 



general statement: 



Some of its nesting sites are exceedingly neat pieces of work; the edges of 

 tlie entrance hole are beautifully beveled off, and the inside is as smooth as if 

 finished with a fine rasp. The entrance is about 1% inches in diameter and 

 the inner cavity varies from 8 to 24 inches in depth; the eggs are deposited 

 on a layer of fine chips. It usually nests in the dead tops or limbs of decidu- 

 ous trees, or in old stumps of oak, ash, butternut, maple, elm, sycamore, cotton- 

 wood, willow, and other species, more rarely in coniferous and fruit trees, at 

 heights varying from 8 to 80 feet from the ground, and also not infrequently 

 in natural cavities. On the treeless prairies it has to resort mainly to tele- 

 graph poles and fence posts, and here it also nests under the roofs of houses 

 or in any dark corner it can find. 



John Helton, Jr., tells me that in Alabama the favorite nesting 

 site is in a rotten stump from which the bark has peeled off ; he very 

 seldom finds a nest in a tree with bark on it. M. G. Vaiden sends 

 me a note on a nest that was only 5 feet from the ground in a limb 

 of a dead oak near Rosedale, Miss. The nests are often placed near 

 houses or in trees on town or village streets. Two broods are often 

 raised in a season and sometimes in the same cavity; A. D. DuBois 

 tells, in his notes, of such a Minnesota nest ; the earlier brood had been 

 raised in a newly excavated cavity that was 14 inches deep; the 

 second set of eggs was laid at a depth of only 9 inches, the bed for the 

 eggs having been raised 5 inches by chiseling fresh chips from the 

 inner walls of the cavity. Dr. H. C. Oberholser (1896b) gives the 

 average measurements of four Ohio nests as follows: Total depth 

 10.75; diameter of entrance 2.06 by 1.66; diameter at entrance 3.81 

 by 2.69; diameter at middle 4.50 by 3.88; and diameter at bottom 

 4.41 by 3.35 inches. 



In the prairie regions and in other places, where trees are scarce 

 and these woodpeckers are common, some unusual and odd nesting 

 sites have been noted. Kumlien and Hollister (1903) write : "Among 

 some of the odd nesting sites we have noted are the following: Be- 

 tween two flat rails on an old style rail fence; the hub of a broken 

 wagon wheel, leaning against a fence; the box of a grain drill left 

 standing in a field; a hole excavated in the hollow cylinder of an 

 ordinary pump; common fence posts and telegraph poles. These 

 were usually in prairie regions where there were few, if any, suitable 

 trees." 



G. S. Agersborg (1881) mentions a nest that "was in the angle 

 formed by the shares of an upturned plow" in South Dakota. And 

 E. A. Stoner (1915) flushed a red-headed woodpecker from a blue 

 jay's nest in Iowa. "The nest was eight feet up in an oak sapling 

 and was a typical Blue Jay's but was found to contain three pure 

 white and unmistakably Woodpecker eggs." 



