270 BULLETIISr 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Flickers quite often nest in boxes erected for that purpose and 

 in buildings, much to the annoyance of the owners. I have frequently- 

 seen nests in icehouses ; these have double walls, the intervening space 

 being filled with sawdust; the birds drill through the outer walls 

 and make their nests in the sawdust. The cornices and walls of 

 many buildings on the farms, as well as the towers of churches and 

 schoolhouses, are perforated, and the eggs laid on the beams or 

 boarding within. Mr. Burns (1900) records the following interesting 

 case: • 



Mr. Burke H. Sinclair found a nest containing eggs in the garret of the 

 town high school. The birds obtained entrance to this large three-story brick 

 building by means of a displaced brick. As in all infloored lofts it consists 

 of nothing but the parallel rafters, with attached lath and plaster, which forms 

 the ceiling of the room below. This frail floor is about ten inches below the 

 entrance hole, and the nest was situated about one foot from and directly 

 in front of the entrance. The place had evidently been used for several years, 

 there being at least a peck of wood chippings, some fresh, but a large quantity old 

 and discolored with age. The nest was placed between two of the parallel 

 rafters and composed of these chippings, being about six inches thick by eighteen 

 inches in diameter. This material had been all cut from the rafters on the 

 floor and the roof overhead. 



A number of other unusual nesting sites have been recorded. 

 F. A. E. Starr tells me of a nest that "was in an old stump two 

 feet high; the six eggs were on a bed of rotten wood at ground 

 level." Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr. (1893), reports a nest that he 

 found on Prince Edward Island ; the "nest with fully fledged young 

 was examined in tlie top of a hollow fence post. No excavation had 

 been made by the bird, and the young were entirely exposed to the 

 weather." Flickers occasionally nest in natural cavities in trees, 

 where no excavation is needed beyond enlarging the opening, if neces- 

 sary, or cleaning out the interior. Ned Hollister (1918) reports that 

 a pair of flickers and a pair of house wrens nested in holes in an 

 old stump in a lion's cage in the National Zoological Park in Wash- 

 ington. Mr. Burns (1900) writes: "It has been found breeding far 

 out on the prairie in an old wagon hub, surrounded by weeds; also 

 in barrels, and one instance of an excavation of the regulation size 

 in a hay stack is on record ; another nested in a crevice of an unused 

 chimney for several years; and stranger yet it has been found more 

 than once occupying Kingfisher's and enlarged Bank Swallow's 

 burrows." 



The haystack nest is reported by Major Bendire (1895), on the 

 authority of William A. Bryant, of New Sharon, Iowa, as follows : 



On a small hill, a quarter of a mile distant from my home, stood a haystack 

 which had been placed there two years previously. The owner, during the 

 winter of 1889-90, had cut the stack through the middle and hauled away 

 one portion, leaving the other standing with the end smoothly trimmed. The 

 following spring I noticed a pair of yellow-shafted flickers about the stack 



