NORTHERX FLICKER 271 



showing signs of wanting to make it a fixed habitation. One morning a few 

 days later I was amused at the efforts of one of the pair. It was clinging to 

 the perpendicular end of the stack and throwing out chipped hay at a rate 

 to defy competition. This work continued for nearly a week, and in that 

 time the pair had excavated a cavity 20 inches in depth. The entrance was 

 located 8V2 feet above ground, and was 2Y2 inches in diameter and dug back 

 into the stack for 6 inches, where it turned sharply downward and was 

 slightly enlarged at the bottom. On May 28 I took a handsome set of seven 

 eggs from the nest, the eggs lying on a bed of chipped hay. The birds lingered 

 about the stack and by June 14 had deposited another set of eggs. * * * 

 I never could quite understand the philosophy of their peculiar choice of this 

 site, as woodland is abundant here. A well-timbered creek bottom was less 

 than half a mile distant, while large orchards and groves surround the place 

 on every hand. 



Kumlien and HoUister (1903) and J. A. Farley (1901) record 

 instances of flickers nesting on hay; in each case the birds bored 

 a hole through the walls of a barn and laid their eggs in a hollow 

 in a pile of hay near the entrance hole. William Brewster (1909) 

 published an account of a flicker's nest on the open ground, found by 

 some ladies on Cape Cod and seen by him. Beside a sandy road, 

 "fully a quarter of a mile from the nearest house and bordered on 

 both sides by dense woods of pitch pines, the ladies found five eggs 

 of the Flicker lying together in a hollo^v in the ground wdthin a few 

 feet of the deeply rutted wagon track." The nest "was a circular, 

 saucer-shaped depression, measuring 21% inches across the top, by 

 3 inches in depth. Dry yellowish sand mixed with fine gravel and 

 wholly free from vegetation of any kind, living or dead, formed its 

 bottom and the gently sloping sides, as well as the surface of the 

 level ground about it for two or three yards in every direction, but 

 a little further back there were weeds and grasses growing sparingly, 

 in slightly richer soil." Photographs of two nests similarly located 

 may be seen in Bird-Lore, volume 18, page 399, and volume 36, page 

 105. 



Mr. Burns's data show that the height of the nest from the gi'ound 

 varies in middle and eastern States from 2 to 60 feet, and in central 

 western States from ground level to 90 feet. His accumulated data 

 on the measurements of nesting cavities show that the depth of the 

 excavation is "greatest in Ne-sv York and Ne^v England (10 to 36 

 inches), Illinois (14 to 24 inches), Pennsylvania (10 to 18 inches), 

 and Minnesota (9 to 18 inches)." Probably the depth of the cavity 

 depends on the quality of the wood and the age of the nest ; when an 

 old cavity is used, it is usually deepened somewhat. Dr. H. C. Ober- 

 holser (1896) gives the measurements of four Ohio nests; the total 

 depth varied from 7 to 18 inches ; the diameter of the entrance varied 

 from 2.00 by 2.00 to 4.00 by 4.00 and averaged 2.94 by 2.72 inches. 

 Mr. Burns (1900) says the diameter of the cavity near the bottom 

 varies from 4.50 to 10.00, and averages 7.67 inches. No nesting mate- 



