16<? Thf. \\'ilson Bulletin. No. 72-73. 



outside of the villages every farm-yard, that has suitable 

 trees, usually furnish a home for a pair, but as there are 

 only two or three farms upon a section of land the houses 

 average about a half mile apart. In placing themselves for 

 the summer how large a space does a pair demand? 



To provide more roosting places, also to see if more than 

 one pair of Flickers could be induced to nest on our grounds 

 the nest-boxes in the barn have been increased from three to 

 seven. Three springs ago a suitable box was nailed upon a 

 willow tree that stands about twenty-five rods from the barn, 

 and the following spring another was placed in my bird- 

 blind, which is situated near the willow tree. When tlie 

 Flickers returned in 1910 the last mentioned boxes were occu- 

 pied by a nesting Screech Owl and her mate, thus once more 

 1 educing accommodations to the boxes in the barn, where, as 

 hitherto, but one pair nested. 



One determining factor, perhaps the principal one, in the 

 spacing of their homes may be the area necessary for their 

 food collection. The places they usually frequent for food 

 are pasture lands and newly mown fields. With binoculars 

 I have followed the flight of a parent Flicker to the barn 

 from a pasture nearly a half mile distant, while far too many 

 ant-hills existed near at hand. This choice of open and 

 closely cropped fields for feeding may be the chief influence 

 that leads them to seek prairie homes, although thousands 

 of wooded acres stretch along the Mississippi River, their 

 western border being but two miles to the east of us. Be- 

 sides our barn the only known buildings in the neighborhood 

 inhabited by this species are an ice house, used for nesting, 

 upon a farm three miles distant, and the amphitheater on the 

 county fair grounds, used for roosting, a quarter of a mile 

 away. 



The advent of the first Flicker in 1908 was on March 26 : 

 for the following spring it was on April 4. while this year 

 it occurred on March 23, and eight days later three of them 

 went to roost in the barn. Amone them the tame old male 



